THE PACIFIC SLOPE. 219 



old-time wagon travel of twenty years ago. The Overland 

 Coaches were not running then, and it was as much as a 

 man's " har " was worth to run the gauntlet of the predatory 

 Indians.* A few days' ride in a Pullman car, with every 

 luxury at command, will take one across the " Divide " to 

 the Pacific slope. Luxuriating there in an arcadia of bound- 

 less extent, with a climate of wonderful salubrity, the angler 

 can unfold a revelation of new experiences startling in their 

 magnitude and sublimity. The scenery of California has 

 formed the inexhaustible theme of every person who has 

 traveled that way ; and if it be that the tourist is impelled 

 by an angler's impulses, as well as by an innate love of 

 nature, he will find his way to virgin lakes and streams 

 where artificial fly has never trailed, and whose silvery" trout 

 have no suspicion of wiles or stratagems. Of those waters 

 adjacent to and accessible from the railroad, may be men- 

 tioned Truckee Lake and River, with their five-pound black- 

 trout ; the Ogden Eiver, three miles from Ogden city, with 

 its black-trout, and its silver-trout, that sometimes weigh 

 twenty pounds apiece ; Donner Lake, two miles and a half 

 from Truckee Lake, a beautiful bottomless lake, three miles 

 long by one mile wide, with black and silver trout ; Lake 

 ^ahoe, nine miles from Truckee, black and silver trout 

 again; with the grand preserve of the Comer Company, 

 stocked with its 2,500 black-trout, weighing from two to 

 twelve pounds apiece ; and so on, almost ad nauseam, so 

 abundant and large are the fish. But the game is sluggish, 

 and not like the lithe, active denizens of the Keepigon or the 

 Tabusintac ; and one's desire soon cloys. Then there is the 

 Russian River, near Healdsburg, that has a variety of more 

 vigorous trout, much like the speckled trout of the Atlantic, 

 and doubtless identical with it ; and the Merced River, in 

 the Yosemite Valley, with a very peculiar chubby-trout, 

 marked with curious spots, and a coral lateral line from gill 



* See Harper's Magazine, Vol. XV., page 688. 



