1883.! 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



251 



Literature. Travels and Personal -Notes. 



COMMUNICATIONS. 



EDITORIAL LETTER. 

 CiiiXE.SE Cami*. Meii-ed County. Cal., June 20. IS*;}. 

 Editors are supposed to know everything — and, 

 indeed, if they are sharp, they may learn much, 

 and get into fair habits of imparting what they 

 know. I, as one of the fraternity, love to know as 

 much as possible of what I am talking about, and 

 hence I love to travel. We learn much from books 

 — we all have to learn from books — but the editor 

 should get his knowledge at first hands if possible. 

 There are very few parts of this great country that 

 I have not seen. It is my habit to take quiet runs, 

 now and then, and say nothing about it. But I had 

 never seen the Pacific coast ; and though I had a 

 pretty fair knowledge from reading, and could gen- 

 erally talk and write fairly about Pacific coast af- 

 fairs, it never seemed that I could write as I ought 

 till I had seen this fairy land for myself. So one 

 evening in May I took my wife and a younger son 

 and started on my long journey of, as we figured 

 it out, eleven thousand miles. To-day is but the 

 20th of June, and we are not yet but half-way 

 on our journey — but as I hope to be home before 

 this letter gets into the reader's hands, I pen it ; it 

 is too cool where I write, alongside the Merced 

 river, for the frisky mosquito to worry me much, as 

 it has been doing all day. I shall be pretty well 

 on towards Behring Straits soon, and then it will 

 be wholly too cool for these pests, I suppose ; but 

 I find every region has its own annoyances, and I 

 suppose even there, where we lay ourselves down 

 to sleep with the sun going round the horizon like 

 as on a race course, instead of setting down below, 

 as a sober sun should, some trouble or another 

 will be found even there. People who stay at home 

 have no idea of what the zealous traveler has to 

 suffer. With my varied interests I have to be al- 

 ways on the go. I love to see nice farms, fine or- 

 chards and pretty gardens. I must make botanical 

 collections, study the rocks and minerals, keep an 

 eye on geology, watch for anthropological tit-bits, 



and keep an eye on choice bits of physical knowl- 

 edge, as they happen to turn up. Forestry and tree 

 science generally has never to be forgotten — and 

 then with my love of noting what men and women 

 do and drawing lessons therefrom for use in public 

 affairs, it will be seen that I have a fair share of 

 the world's work to do. 1 am surely one of the 

 weary travelers we hear tell of now and then — at 

 least we should be weary if, with all our labors and 

 discomforts, our experience was not ever new. To- 

 day we are driving through dust so thick that we 

 can scarcely breathe — to-morrow plodding over 

 some dreary desert, with the alkaline winds drying 

 our lips so that they crack and bleed whenever we 

 smile. Now we are on the top of a snow-covered 

 eminence, with the wind freezing us on one side, 

 while the clear, bright sun warms us on the other; 

 and again, we are going down along some uneven 

 plain on the seats of a stage coach, tossing up and 

 down and almost making the poor being wish he was 

 an oyster, or anything but a creature with a back- 

 bone in him. One time he is among the rich and 

 the great, with much of the fearful restrictions 

 which ultra-fashionable life throws about him; and 

 then again, as at this moment, trying to write an 

 editorial by the flicker of a tallow candle, in an 

 humble cabin, with his hands so swollen by mos- 

 quito bites that they look like two griddle cakes, 

 while his face in the small piece of looking-glass 

 stuck in a crack over the door looks more like a 

 rough, red raspberry than the handsome, smooth 

 face he once called his own. Sometimes with 

 nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and thirsting 

 for water to drink — at other times with so much of 

 the good things of this world that your next friend 

 is tempted to tell you that a "dose of podophyllin" 

 will soon set you all right, and every fellow you 

 meet tells you of a certain remedy, till you almost 

 wish you may never have another good dinner in 

 your life. Only a few days ago I was toiling up a 

 mountain trail to get a view from "Glacier Point." 

 I was favored by an "extra sure-footed pony" 

 for the ascent. On and on we went for five hours 



