THE MINING DISTRICT 215 



lowia, Argemone, and Compositae, all over the face of the 

 bare, yellow and red, hilly landscape. 



The mines are marvellous, yielding daily thousands of 

 pounds of gold and silver. The machinery for working the 

 mines, crushing, amalgamating and smelting and assaying, 

 &c., is quite superb, gigantic in short, and all so well kept, 

 clean, and complete. I have seeji nothing like it elsewhere. 

 Then too the Banks, places of business, Hotels, &c., at these 

 mining cities are as perfect in fittings, carpets, pictures, 

 clocks, &c., &c., as the trimmest house in Lombard Street. 

 Everything is done regardless of expense, and yet efficiently. 

 You see no makeshifts anywhere. The houses are small 

 and wooden (no one cares to invest in such things, they 

 are too often burnt down, and the more lucrative lodes of 

 silver and gold may be worked out at a day's notice) but 

 look very neat inside, windows always clean ; outside, 

 i.e. about the house generally, they are very slovenly, no, 

 or few, little gardens or grass plots. 



Since I began this I have added very largely to my collec- 

 tion from the desert region, though the season is too late. 

 We are now starting for the Yosemite, by some interior 

 route across the Sierra Nevada which rises in rocky ridges 

 with P. ponderosa to the West of us, while all to the East 

 are hideous, bare, rounded, stony hills with a grey tufted 

 vegetation as mentioned above, and only Pinus monophylla, 

 which finds both its N. and its W. limits here and continues 

 E. only to W. Utah and S. to Arizona ; it is a very small 

 species, a round bunchy thing, and appears to me to represent 

 P. edulis of the lower zone of the Rocky Mts. I am getting 

 a great deal of information about forest trees, and have learnt 

 an enormous deal of botany in a month (it is just 31 days 

 since we left New York for the West). The Stracheys have 

 gone home. Dr. and Mrs. Gray and Prof. Hayden go on 

 with me to California. We shall be ten days in getting to 

 San Francisco by this route. I miss letters most terribly. 

 If forwarded from Boston we do not get them, and I have 

 no news since July 16 (from Dyer). 



With kindest regards to Mrs.- Oliver and the Bakers, 

 Ever affectionately yours, 



Jos. D. HOOKER. 



P.S. The weather has been on the whole most cool and 



