164 East and West 
end of every road we shall find only ourselves, 
from whom there is noescape. Auburn, Colfax, 
Cape Horn—then vast and abysmal, now 
dwindled astonishingly,—Dutch Flat, Gold 
Run, Alta, Blue Cafion and the mysteri- 
ous snowsheds, Emigrant’s Gap, Summit, 
Truckee, Tahoe, Reno, Carson, Virginia City 
at last,—roaring flumes, lean-to’s, ‘‘guns,’’ 
street fights, poker games, miners, gamblers, 
cowpunchers, red ants on the barroom bottles, 
—it all comes back like the memory of some 
curious dream and only the present roar of 
the flume and the sombre pines in the fire- 
light lend it reality. 
In the early morning as I cast a fly on the 
swift stream above the flume and feel now 
and again the pleasurable nibble of a trout 
or the sudden pull which, communicated by 
means of the rod, translates itself into an 
agreeable emotion, I am reminded of very 
different scenes. Once upon a time there was 
fishing to be had in the headwaters of the 
Sacramento and in the McCloud and thither 
we were wont to go with high hopes and a good 
supply of hooks. In those days Redding was 
the terminus of the railroad. Arriving in the 
evening the passengers, in long linen dusters, 
immediately climbed aboard the Concord 
