As we stepped on board the steamer Senator , bound for "the American Naples," last Friday, with a valise in one hand and seventeen infallible remedies for sea-sickness in the other, we mused deeply upon the peculiarities of Pacific Coast marine nomenclature. If there is any good, able-bodied noun in the dictionary utterly unsuggestive of navigation, the title "Senator" would seem to head the list of inappropriateness. We can dimly understand the possibility of calling a craft by any distinctly feminine appellation, even where the nautical suggestion is absent; we can excuse the water-front man who christened a new barge "Democrat" the other day, for there is an ironical imputation in connecting a Democrat with water that is highly humorous; and we can also conceive that the owner of the brig Auctioneer intended a facetious allusion to quick sales; but the wherefore of "Senator" involves a problem more fitted to the puzzle department of this chaste family journal than to this one. It is just possible, however, that a compliment to some local political luminary was intended, and if our free and unbiased voters can think of a

PACIFIC COAST SENATOR,

Present or past, whose personal characteristics are a remarkable combination of slowness, heaviness, dinginess and age, we at once invest him with the honor and proceed.

In order to afford relief for the sufferings caused unoffending travelers by the imposition upon them of the four or five hundred and odd remedies for sea-sickness now in vogue, it is 9 6 somewhat singular that Congress itself has not interposed its omnipresent finger. We hear a great deal of government inspection of steamer boilers, but no thought seems to be given to the legal suppression of sea-sickness, which is a much more important matter, and throws the Chinese question in the shade in point of general interest. In the most solemn manner we assert that Congress is quite able to reduce the prevalence of this most terrible affliction fully seventy-five per cent. by simply requiring the captains of ocean steamers, before starting, to promptly place in irons and in confinement in the remotest sub-cellar, so to speak, of the vessel, just four peculiar and inevitable characters that, by some inscruable provision of nature, form part of evey passenger list since Noah's Ark. Everybody who has been at sea instinctively knows the criminals to whom we allude. Three of the four are invariably drummers of the cheap and vociferous sort, while the other is the typical "funny man" of travel. The commercial travelers are chiefly obnoxious for the stentorian conversation they carry on at all hours and seasons, for the evident purpose of advertising their business and personal importance with impartial thoroughness. They quarrel at table and make up again, solely as a vehicle for repeated references to their wares and trades facilities, and generally goad the other passengers to madness by their effusive familiarities. But their day is short; the heavings of the outer bar soon quench their Hebraic utterances in the significant gurgle indicative of lost breakfasts. Not so with the funny dog, however. He is the

MAN WHO NEVER GETS SEASICK,

And not only does he announce this fact to the constant utter exasperation of the other passengers, who are beginning to feel like going to their staterooms, "just to read the newspaper, you know," but corrals their undying hatred by the wouldbe humorous devices with which he endeavors to undo the few stronger spirits, who are still fighting a hand-to-hand combat with their livers, and endeavoring to "hold on" to the bitter end. The specially choice humorous effect perpetrated by our particular specimen of practical joker consisted in his carrying round a lump of pork fat

TIED TO A STRING,

And which he constantly suggested to those afflicted with unrelieved nausea the propriety of swallowing and then pulling up again as a means of "having it all over" with dispatch, The scoundrel well knowing that not one of his spasmodic victims possessed the strength to murder him in cold blood as he deserved. If the general government can't protect its citizens from outrages on the high seas such as this, then it is high time that Pigtail Arthur abdicated in favor of some competent despot with

AN IRON HEEL

Of the most grinding description screwed on his right boot, as we are informed is the correct thing in tyrants nowadays. This fresh young party did not last long either, however. There is a point past which even the wretched and the retching must not be goaded. About one o'clock in the night this comodian of the heaving deep conceived the idea of knocking at each stateroom door in succession, and inquiring with mock interest of the sufferer within whether he or she didn't think a dose of castor oil would be of service. There was a peculiar

JESSE-JAMES-LIKE HEARTLESSNESS

Of villainy about this suggestion that nerved his victims to a desperate effort. The next morning when the wan but reviving passengers once more charged the imminent deadly breach of the breakfast table, there was one vacant seat. The travelers glanced furtively at one another, but not a word was said. By tacit consent nobody alluded to the sound of a brief scuffle and a shrill cry that had broken the dogwatches of the night. There was one joker less in the world--that was enough. Poor devil, where be thy gibes now? Doth the codfish grin at thy shopworn capers, and the appreciative lobster tickle thy unresponsive side? Alas, thou art

QUITE CHOP-FALLEN--

Overboard, as it were. As for us, we shall not eat shrimps for a month. There might be something "funny" about their taste.

Speaking about the types one meets on a voyage, everybody 11 8 must recognize that other inevitable personage, the fat old lady with four green bandboxes and a pimple on her chin, who gets into every berth on the steamer in turn by mistake, and who has to be "shood" off by the rightful owner, with very much the same cackle and fuss occasioned by dispossessing a setting hen of her nest.

Somebody circulated a libel on Voegtlin, the wellknown scene painter, to the effect that upon his first view of the Yosemite, he stood enraptured for a moment and then exclaimed earnestly, "Why how natural it all is. I feel just as though I were

IN A THEATER!"

His expression exactly suited the feeling with which we viewed Port Harford, at which the steamer touched. The three sides of the wharf, the only structure in sight, were shut in by as many abrupt hills, like the "flat" and side-scenes of a theater. On the wharf were two very unreal "Under-the-Gaslight" sort of cars, hitched to a property locomotive, and which presently sneaked off into a crack in the side-hill, or "right upper entrance," from which they were doubtless backed out and "set" for another act as soon as we left. The only inhabitant--and who was doubtless also the Port Warden--was an old party in brown overalls, who sat upon a pile, fishing and fast asleep. The butt of the pole rested against his stomach, a circumstance our pilot took advantage of to steer the steamer against its other end, knocking the fisher off his perch, and thereby securing his entire attention. There being no passengers to exchange, and the lone fisherman having put a small cheese on board and taken off a paper of tacks, the boat backed away from this commercial center, leaving us lost in wonder why the

CHORUS DID NOT APPEAR,

Or Fra Diavolo begin to tumble down the rocks, melodiously warbling three bars behind the orchestra. As we steamed away, the old man climbed again upon his perch, and soon his double-barrel snore came to us faintly upon the following wind.

Strive to efface it as we may, there must be some undefinable mark about the journalist that distinguishes him among his fellow men. There must be some indelible quality inherent in 12 9 printer's ink that indicates its bondsmen beyond disguise. As the good ship--all ships are good when you are about to leave them--nodded and splashed her way into the Santa Barbara channel, a rustic-looking passenger approached and said:

"Say, beint you a newspaper man?"

We hesitated.

"Say, now, own up; ain't you, now?"

Struck by the facility with which true intellectuality was recognized, even by the most ignorant minds, we admitted the fact.

"I thought so!" exclaimed our interrogator, with enthusiasm. "I bet my partner, there, four dollars you were, and he took me up. He was sure he had me, because you hadn't any of the regular marks of them writing fellers."

"WHAT MARKS DO YOU MEAN?"

We inquired, affably.

"Why, I saw myself you hadn't dirty cuffs and blue finger nails, long hair and hard-boiled eyes, and a generally-played-out sort of look; but, then, I notice you had four pencils in your vest pocket, all sharpened , and so I knew I had the deadwood on the bet."

And we bowed our stag-like head and wept. It is remarkable how thick-skulled and impudent the lower classes are becoming, nowadays; it is, for a fact.

SANTA BARBARA

Impresses the traveler at first as the mathematical definition of a straight line. It begins on a surprisingly long wharf that looks as if its projectors originally started it as a bridge to China. This is one with the main street, which thoroughfare--a persistent attempt of the inhabitants towards living all in a row--makes an equally praiseworthy effort to reach to New York in the other direction. We believe there have been isolated attempts made to build off this street, but the perpetrators have been practically boycotted for their temerity. That Santa Barbara possesses the most beautiful combinations of climate and scenery to be found on this hemisphere is something that does not exactly go without saying, as the remark is in 13 10 the mouth of every one you meet, both native and foreign, every fifteen minutes of the day; and, seriously, it is a revelation and refreshment to find even one summer resort upon the face of the round globe of whose attractions its prospectuses could not well lie if they tried. A resort at which attendants follow one around all day with iced drinks and tropical fruits, and at which saddle horses, at six bits a day , amble one through Nature's own Central Park, might well cause that king of romancers, the newspaper advertisement writer, to lay down his ineffectual pen in despair. For some unfathomable reason, the

SANTA BARBARIANS

Have selected, as their chief objects of local interest, a flat-topped eminence near at hand, called the "Mesa," and "The Big Grapevine." One has hardly shaken hands with a resident when the following cast-iron conversation occurs:

Resident--Have you been on the Mesa?

Visitor--Oh, yes!

Resident--Ah! Seen the Big Vine?

Visitor--Oh, yes!

Resident (after a long pause)--I suppose you know that Mesa is Spanish for "table," eh?

Visitor--Oh, yes; so I hear.

Upon which the resident looks profoundly astonished and dries up, linguistically speaking. Fifteen or twenty repetitions of this formula per diem somewhat palls upon one, as the schoolboy said of his nineteenth apple dumpling. Once we varied the monotony by reversing such an interview, about as follows:

Visitor--Glad to meet you, sir; have you been on the Mesa?

Resident (with a dumbfounded expression)--N-n-no, don't think I ever have.

Visitor--Seen the Big Vine, haven't you?

Resident (comparatively paralyzed)--No, I think not; that is, not since the Centennial. I saw there the one they took from here.

Visitor--Where does the existing one grow?

Resident (after deep reflection)--Let me see. Well, I'm blessed if I know!

All of which goes to prove again that the prophet is without honor in his own county, and that the only people who never by any chance see a curiosity are those who live next door to it.

THE LEONINE ORANGE,

However, is the real glory of the southern coast. On all sides the visitor sees those small, wellkept plantations, which are generally regarded as the fairy tales peculiar to California land sellers, but which, it seems, do really exist in this locality of wonders. We stopped at one yesterday, and while consuming a few dozen gross of oranges from one of the trees, the proprietor sauntered up and gave us the figures in the case. He had a small piece of ground apparently, a single sunny hill slope, upon which there were placed just four hundred trees to a dot. Each of these was numbered and visited just once a week as a matter of routine. Twice a year, I think, they were plowed around and harrowed. Each tree bore a yearly crop of from five hundred to one thousand oranges. These sold readily for an average of two dollars a hundred, the steady demand being something over three times greater than the supply. The only labor used was his own and sons, and the income over expenses for three years past was just sixty-one hundred dollars per year. This man, who lived practically as well as Vanderbilt, and with the Garden of Eden for a workshop, was not content. He said the real goal of his ambition was to become a journalist, and run a nice little weekly paper, somewhere. While we were cutting a club to beat out his alleged brains, he was called away; but if

THE FOOL KILLER

Don't attend to his case pretty soon we miss our guess. Next to oranges, the olive is what the farsighted ranchers of this vicinity are beginning to tie to, the cultivation of which under the leadership and example of Elwood Cooper and Colonel Hollister, the patron saint and good genius of the whole place, already bids fair to be the leading industry of the lower coast--in fact, the Santa Barbarians have literally got olives on the brain, and it is rumored that the entire town council, a select body of bald-heads, recently repaired to San Francisco in a body 15 12 for the purpose of attending the Comley-Barton troupe's very excellent leg-opera. This they did under the deep-seated delusion that "Olivette" was a work calulated to throw valuable light upon the culture of their favorite production.

SANTA BARBARA.

GOOD SALAD OIL--"THE BIG PADRONE"--HIS PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPY--A THEATRE PILOT--A STREET-CAR VOYAGE--THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAY--MATINEE TICKETS--A MODEL EDITOR--THE FLY-FOOTED 'STANG--A DIME NOVEL PRODUCT.

In our last we started to give the thirsters after reliable horticultural facts some information regarding the future great industry of this part of the coast--olive culture. A wealthy and much esteemed, though inexplicably immortal relative of the writer, cherishes a theory that, after all, the only real sign of a born gentleman is his devotion to a good salad, and the same party used often to profanely aver his profound indifference to the allurements of a better world than this, unless he was assured of finding a first-class brand of salad oil there. For many years past, however, this gourmet has indignantly striven to conceal the fact of his being an American, as an extensive travel in this country has revealed the, to him, exasperating fact that his countrymen universally use nothing but cotton-seed oil, and very bad cotton-seed oil, in the place of the pure Italian article. It was with a full knowledge of this unnatural preference, and, also, that the big, chuckle-headed public always prefers to pay for any vile article to which it is accustomed, rather than for something really good to which it is unused, that Colonel Hollister started the olive experiment in this vicinity. As is always the case in such experiments, the surrounding planters at first held back and looked on, but in the end they fell into line, and now, from the Colonel's own great ranch, that of Mr. Elwood Cooper particularly and many others here, large quantities of the clearest and purest salad oil is manufactured and sent East, where, notably in Philadelphia, it outsells the imported competitor and rules the market. Apropos of this 17 14 subject, a word may be said here toward mitigating the whirlwind of hostile criticism stirred up in these troublous times by the former gentleman's attitude upon the cheap labor question. An impression seems to have gotten about that Colonel Hollister is necessarily a parsimonious capitalist, whose greed to secure wealth for himself impels him to begrudge a fair recompense to the labor of others. Nothing more unlike the real composition of the character of

"THE BIG PADRONE,"

As given by everybody in this section, can be imagined. A generation ago Colonel H. passed through this fertile valley in charge of a huge flock of sheep, not his own. He camped one night on the lovely slope of land where his superb place, "Glen Annie," now stands. He left the spot with the fixed resolve to one day build his home there, and to transform the scattered adobe hovels that clustered about the venerable Mission into a model town. To-day he realizes his ambition; but now, as then, his absorbing purpose is to lead, to encourage, to build up. If a mortgage is to be lifted, a business started, a failure to be avoided, a charity to be promoted, Colonel Hollister is consulted, as a matter of course. From starting a bank to planting a rosegarden, the people here turn to him with a confidence and faith born of long usage. His philanthropy is as broad and searching as the winter's rain, and is taken as much as a matter of course as the rain itself. His one absorbing hobby is still to foster, establish and beautify this whole section, and his eagerness to obtain cheap labor for certain agricultural purposes is solely the result of the chagrin and impatience with which he sees great industries, that would otherwise enrich his people, fall in their struggle against high labor and high freights. For a single illustration, the Colonel has spent, I forget how many thousand dollars, to add almonds to the exports of the place. The soil is exactly adapted to them, but the cost of gathering leaves no profit, and the writer has literally seen the ax being sharpened that is to

HEW TO THE GROUND

Heaven knows how many thousand vigorous and fullfruited almond trees, to make room for other possibly just as costly 18 15 experiments undertaken for the public good. It is not in the least a partial statement to say that in such a case Colonel Hollister mourns not for the money wasted, but for the industry that has perished.

The axiom that it is always the unexpected that happens seems to gain new force from the present outlook of Santa Barbara. A few years ago we suppose its most farseeing inhabitant never dreamed of its one day becoming the great watering place of the coast, but to-day the beginning of the construction of its allrail connection with the East makes that prediction a comparatively safe one. Not but what its citizens have still something to do to fit their town for its future honors. The other evening we wandered forth in search of its theater. A California town always begins with a theater and a saloon as a nucleus. After some trouble we discovered a Chinaman who was piloting himself through a particularly dark side street

WITH A LIGHTED CANDLE

In his hand, and who obligingly showed us the way. The theater building was not so bad, but the scene painter and the property man were evidently on a strike. A company of eminent "tragedians from the city"--chiefly from the Bella Union, to be exact--were doing "Pygmalion and Galatea" in a style that would have made the talented author of that satire foam at the mouth. A common deal table and two kitchen chairs constituted the whole setting, and when the cruel soldier who kills the fawn with his arrow in the second act, appeared with

A JACKASS RABBIT

Slung over his shoulder by its ears, and a shotgun under his arm, a chance to go out somewhere and work off a good, square chuckle was "alone worth the price of admission," as the small bills remarked concerning a clog dance, appropriately introduced by Galatea in the last scene. Like every other small town of vigorous ambition, Santa Barbara has a line of street cars, or perhaps we should say street car . This vehicle, which is of the bobtail kind and drawn by a mule of the same variety, is run upon an accommodating system that would throw one of our own dog-exterminating dummy engineers into spasms to 19 16 behold. It is a boon to all the fat old ladies of the bailiwick, however, as it pulls up in front of the dry goods stores and obligingly waits until the passenger does her shopping, or exchanges the gossip of the day with some passing neighbor. The other passengers, should there be any, never object to this, but resign themselves to a quiet siesta, or a game of pedro until the procession moves on. The car itself usually resembles a market stall, as the accommodating half-breed, who slumbers against the brake, executes numberless commissions en route, and does the marketing for many of his patrons. The track is about a mile long, but if the return trip is not made the same day, a passenger can always be sure of getting back up town bright and early

THE NEXT MORNING.

The lower terminus of the car track is at the wharf, and the driver, who resides a few blocks from the turntable, relates that one day last season he concluded to get off for dinner, leaving the mule to complete the trip, and relying upon its stopping at the end, or at most returning with the car in the accustomed manner. But when his repast was completed, and he proceeded to regain the car, it was nowhere to be found. At length, by the merest accident, the roof of the bobtail was seen about a mile out at sea. The faithful animal, not being checked, had calmly walked overboard, and was making its average half-mile per hour in the direction of Japan. A fisherman's boat was manned, and after some hours' hard rowing the fugitive car was reached,

THE BRAKES PUT DOWN,

And the mule headed towards shore. This pathetic circumstance was related to us by the car-driver, who was much pained at our incredulity, until, at his suggestion, we felt the mule's hide and were convinced. It was still damp.

If that body of Rip Van Winkles, known as the Lick Estate Trustees, were to stand on the beach here some fine day and take a steady look seaward, they could, even without the aid of that big telescope they occasionally wake up to inform us is in course of construction, discern, resting like a bit of cold, watery haze--a sort of Rutherford B haze, in fact--on 20 17 the horizon's edge, the island of Santa Catalina, which is an item among the effects turned over to them by the confiding old millionaire. Just how James Lick became possessed of that lonely bit of wave-girt territory we did not learn, but the island will always possess a weird fascination as the one upon which the castaway woman was found by some cruising hunters after twenty years had elapsed since her desertion by the crew of a sailing vessel. Most people have heard her pitiful story as published in Scribner's last summer, but here on the spot of the rescue of the lonely hermitess the tale comes home to one in a way that causes the fabled hardships of Robinson Crusoe and the "Swiss Family Robinson" to seem trivial in comparison. In the company of Mr. C. F. McGlashen, the editor of the Santa Barbara Press , we drove to the sea-facing hill where still live the family of the sea-otter hunters that discovered the castaway, and there, gazing over the just-wrinkled waters of the placid Pacific, we mused upon the strangeness of the story. Within gunshot, so to speak, absolutely in view of a busy town and a score of ranches, this poor creature had lingered out a whole generation of existence, until as one by one the hopes born of every distant sail died out of her self-consuming mind, the final reaction set in and the poor outcast became as wild as the sea-birds that screamed above her head, as torpid and emotionless as the shellfish upon which she fed. Two years previous to her rescue, or rather

THE WILD CREATURE'S CAPTURE,

The hunters had touched at the island, and had discovered footsteps upon the sand, but their maker eluded the search then made. In time the spot was again visited, with the express purpose of looking for the castaway. At last her den was discovered--an almost inaccessible cleft in the face of a cliff. The shy being within refused to appear, and no attempts could induce her to leave her refuge, to which she clung with the pertinacity of a hunted animal. A gaudy cloth was exhibited, ribbons were fluttered at the entrance of her abode, but still neither her savage nor feminine instincts were aroused. A box of real city caramels were placed in view without avail. When every device had been exhausted, the 21 18 men withdrew to their boat and were about to leave the creature to her fate, when suddenly an inspiration seized the most experienced of the party. Drawing a couple of matinee tickets from his pocket, he held them up in view. Then, for the first time, her womanly yearnings

CAUGHT ON

To the proposition.

"Are they reserved seats--in the Dress Circle?" she asked.

The tempter admitted that such was the case.

"In the front row!"

He nodded.

It was too much. He had hit upon the touch of female nature that keeps the whole world broke, and she weakly accompanied them back to civilization, housework and things.

Speaking of Editor McGlashen, who can tell why it is that the editors in country towns--or perhaps we had better say country cities , before we get into trouble--are invariably better looking, better mannered, and generally more genial and companionable than their prototypes of the municipal press? Not only is this an apparently inflexible rule, but the former seem to take a sincere and hearty delight in their profession that is a source of perennial wonder to the overdriven quills on those fretful porcupines, the city dailies.

In mythological times the country here roundabout must have been inhabited by a race of Centaurs, for the whole region is one labyrinth of the most devious bridle paths leading from one otherwise inaccessible Elysian landscape to another. The natives do everything but eat their dinners on horseback, and we are not sure but some of them do that. The horses are mustangs of the true insectivorous breed, whose nature enables them to stick on to hillsides steep enough to give a chamois the vertigo. Their natural vocation seems to be climbing, and one is almost--we say almost --tempted to credit the story told us the other day by a vaquero, of a mare, who, having lost her colt, climbed of her own accord to the apex of the highest peak in the vicinity in order to the better view the most distant pasture her offspring might have sought. A few days ago, while riding along the beach, we happened upon a 22 19 flock of huge turkey buzzards gorging themselves upon the carcass of a steer that had evidently fallen from the edge of the cliff, some two hundred feet above. One or two of the late comers to the feast managed to painfully flop their way into space, but the rest sat as stupid as the jury in the Star Route case, utterly unable to even waddle out of the way of a riding-whip. We remained so long musing upon the spectacle presented by these Boss Tweeds of the atmosphere, that when we turned to proceed, the surf was splashing against the foot of the cliff before us, while behind another rocky point met the rising tide and cut off escape. We were caught in an ugly trap, as the cliff in front ran up at an angle about equal to the peaked roof of a Gothic church. Its face was composed of strata of gravel and slate-like rock. While calculating the probability of becoming a "dem'd moist, unpleasant body," our 'stang took in the situation on his own account and began calmly walking up the face of the wall in front. We held on to his mane and our own breath until

ABOUT HALF WAY UP,

Where he stopped to contemplate the scenery. While he was thus engaged, and we were making a mental will, the buzzards beneath lumbered out in single file to cock their carmine heads and regard us out of the corners of their sinister white eyelids. They evidently counted on an esthetic dessert. Presently the horse started again. Fifty feet higher up he slid back a few feet, and we "had hopes" as the Irishman in the hod said. But it was apparently only an intentional movement to enable our equine spider to snatch a lunch of spike grass he had over-looked, and in a few more centuries of suspense, he carried us over the edge with a cat-like heave of the hind legs that made his ribs shut together like a dropped hoop skirt. The landscape looked singularly beautiful to us from that hight, and as we wiped the cold sweat from our brow and listened to the disappointed croak of the ornithological Board of Supervisors below, we realized that there are some things in life calculated to rattle even the nerve of a journalist.

Among the most profuse tropical productions of this region are wildcats. We are not now referring to the mining 23 20 industries, but to an unpleasantly vindictive animal that loafs around the ranches and gets a heap more spring chicken and roast pig than the summer boarders do. These connoisseurs of spring lamb are often the size of a big dog, and when cornered have a congressional habit of

INSERTING CLAWS

Into everything that gives great popularity to the theory of letting them severely alone. As we cantered home over the flower-spangled mead we beheld, sitting on a manzanita stump by the roadside, a small boy with an enormously long, old-fashioned, muzzle-loading rifle. His knitted brows were bent upon one of the ten-cent Indian fighting novels so dear to the heart of the small boy of the period, which he appeared to peruse with deep disgust. He was evidently a city juvenile whose first hunting expedition in the country had not yielded the number of scalps or grizzly claws averaged by "The Boy Avenger, or the Blood Drinker of the Far West."

"After Indians, sonny?" we inquired.

"No--bears. But ding blame this book! I believe it was written by a woman after all," said the small hunter, with profound disgust.

"Why so?"

"Well, these directions how to track bears and California lions are all guff. I've been fooling around that chaparral all day, making noises like a wounded sheep, and all that sort of thing, till I'm hoarse, and I can't scare up the first thing."

We suggested for him to compromise on wild-cats, as more amenable to interviews; and, as we departed, he once more shouldered his weapon and "plunged into the recesses of the forest." As he passed the hotel, a couple of hours later, without his unerring weapon, and with the ragged basement of his knickerbockers fluttering in the breeze, we inferred that he had managed to connect with some vigorous feline of the woods, who, unlike the bears and Indians, are almost always in during

OFFICE HOURS.

A mile further we encountered another, and even smaller, type of Young America lying on the grass and groaning dismally. 24 21 His white face and a package of the vile trash known as "Vanity Fair" cigarettes, that lay beside him, told the tale. He was learning to smoke, and, as we rode off, sounds suggestive of a bronze statue trying to throw up its pedestal attested the pleasure derived from the operation. Something has been legally done to keep children from strong drink, but so far the accompanying evils of strong literature and strong tobacco are unchecked--doing all they can to make prematurely mannish and blase´ the rising generation. Musing upon this theme, we entered the bar-room and abstractedly watched the intelligent bar-keeper at once begin the concoction of a

LONG NAPA SODA JULEP.

"Take from childhood," we murmured, "the odorous herb of its verdancy, the pungent strength of its ardent spirits, the sugar of its innocent affection, the crystal ice of its limpid purity, and what--ah! what have we left?"

"Why, nothing," said the eminently practical bar-keeper; "nothing except the tumbler and the straw."

And he was right, gentle reader, he was right.

If a visitor here desired to enjoy a unique sensation, as well as appreciate one of the many things that make this unsatisfactory life endurable in this favored section, a stroll into the theater building during the progress of the County Flower and Citrus Exhibition last week, would easily accomplish both results. Imagine an auditorium about the size of that of the Standard, filled with tables and benches literally banked and covered with every conceivable species of flower, without limit as to quantity. Roses, in particular, were represented in every variety and branch of Flora's loveliest family, however rare, delicate or remote--from the Giganticus something-or-other to the tiny little "Peruvian Midget," a variety so small that fifty of them make a bouquet no larger than a ten-cent piece; a flower fit for the buttonhole of

THE FAIRY KING

Himself. All these were arranged with a somewhat provincial want of taste in combination and contrast, except in rare cases, a disadvantage nothing but the intrinsic loveliness of the material itself could overcome. And to think that the first prize for variety was awarded to an odd-looking specimen labeled, "The Dwarf Skunk Cabbage." It would, indeed, seem that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Among the citrus fruits were oranges as big as ten-pin balls, shaddocks, Japanese plums, gigantic limes, lemons big enough to each make sufficient lemonade for a Sunday-school--a hundred high-pressure stomachs in one fell globe.

Since imparting the valuable information concerning the olive culture that distinguished our last letter, we concluded to kill time by really visiting an olive ranch and inquiring somewhat into the subject, a most peculiar and exceptional proceeding on the part of a modern expert. We selected

AS A VICTIM

Mr. Elwood Cooper, whose 2,000-acre farm, twelve miles from Santa Barbara, is, without any dispute or dissent, far and away the loveliest spot in all this country round--and we doubt if the Great Primal Scene-painter Himself duplicated its unique beauty anywhere else on this continent. Four years ago, the then infant industry of olive-raising received an almost fatal check by the sudden appearance and spread of a foreign insect pest, brought to this country in some olive-cuttings imported from Australia. Such were its ravages that olive-growing was comparatively abandoned and many large plantations sacrificed. Mr. Cooper, who is a chemist and student, as well as possessing a large and admirably available, fund of horticultural knowledge generally, kept on experimenting, until he discovered

A FATAL INSECTICIDE

That went right to the spot, and has kept his trees from blight ever since. This remedy, we believe, is a judicious combination of petroleum and milk, "scientifically assimilated," though whether this means that they are chemically incorporated, or naturally so by feeding the cows on petroleum, we are unable to state. We drove through miles of bright-tinted olive trees, heavily laden with flowers. The fruit, when ripe, is gathered and dried for a few days to remove a portion of the water it contains. It is then poured in a circular trough, and ground to a paste resembling

BLACKBERRY JAM,

By a primitive-looking wheel revolved by a mule. This greasy jam is then placed between boards in layers some six inches thick, and subjected to a twenty-ton pressure by means of a huge lever-shaft. The oil that gushes forth is caught in tubs, roughly strained, and pumped into a great oaken vat from 27 24 which it is re-drawn as needed, strained through paper and bottled. Each bottle sells, far ahead of production, at one dollar, and every few days a six-horse team takes a load of, say five thousand bottles, to the steamer wharf, the driver bringing back, figuratively speaking, to the lucky rancher, a check for $5,000. Under the circumstances it is easy to assume that Mr. Cooper's 'Frisco bank account is

OIL RIGHT.

This product sells in the retail stores for $1.50 a bottle, and, with the exception of some little, used for home consumption in the olive-growing districts of the south of France, is the only perfectly pure oil in the world, even the famous Lucca brand of Cross & Blackwell containing a large per cent. of cotton-seed oil or mustard-seed oil--eating the latter being about the same thing as taking a mustard plaster internally.

Santa Barbara contains the largest, and, architecturally speaking, the most imposing of the California Mission building. Mr. Ford, the well-known artist, exhibits at his studio here a very rare and singularly interesting gallery, composed entirely of paintings of California Missions, to produce which he has devoted years of toil, travel and artistic devotion. The set is now complete, and the twenty-one original Missions of the State are faithfully represented. Many of them had to be painted partly from tradition, or the vestiges left by ruins and alterations, some having been torn down in places or built around for other purposes. While our bonanzaites are paying fat sums for

COTTON BATTING ELEPHANTS,

With pinewood tusks, and antediluvian basswood frogs, which can be turned out of Professor Ward's prehistoric factory at any time, why does it not occur to some of them to purchase Mr. Ford's gallery, or at least order duplicates for the Pioneers' Association, or the new academy? Nothing of greater historical value, both present and to come, to our whole commonwealth, could possibly be imagined. Which of our plutocrats will be the first to make our State archives thus complete before some Eastern gallery buys the originals and the right of reproduction

AT THE SAME TIME?

One phase of the labor question in this land of perennial summer is the eagerness the ranchers show to snap up laborers among the newcomers before the insiduous climate

GETS IN ITS WORK.

For a few weeks--perhaps a month or two--the new broom sweeps clean, and the stranger does his fair day's labor; but after a time the alluring scenery, the balmy air, the tropical ease and plenty around, gradually enervate his energies, and he surely succumbs to the native example around him. We rode past a group of four men, the other day, who were hired to pick English walnuts for a wage of twenty dollars a month and found. They were all sitting on the grass languidly eating oranges, except two, who had mustered enough enterprise to be teasing a tarantula with a stick. That was in the morning. In the afternoon we repassed, and they were all lying on their backs asleep, except one--a sort of sentinel on duty, who kept an eye fixed on the laden branches above him. He evidently suspected some particular nut of an intention to fall, and determined it should not do so without

HIS SPOTTING IT.

None of the party stirred as we rode up and looked into the huge walnut basket. There were just four unhusked walnuts in it, from which we inferred that the average cost of gathering walnuts in that section was about two dollars and a quarter per nut.

Talking about the tarantulas: a young lady resident, who has been at some pains to explain to the writer the local resources of diversion, started out the other day to show us an amusing experiment with these gigantic spiders. She assured us that one had only to catch two tarantulas, hold one down on his back with a stick, and then place the other in the first one's grasp, to witness the most vindictive and exciting combat imaginable. We had not lost any tarantulas--whose bite, by the way, is as fatal as a

MISSION-STREET BED-BUG--

But we stood in and helped find one, and then herded it to a 29 26 bare spot of ground, where the fair barbarian volunteered to hold it under her foot while we hunted up another. Number two was finally discovered. Any amateur at the spider business who essays to pick up a healthy, able-bodied tarantula, about the size of a soup plate, between a couple of round sticks, had better let out the job to the highest bidder. However, this was finally accomplished, and we returned to the battle-field imbued with the pleasant conviction that we should be bit in nine separate places before the

CIRCUS WAS OVER.

When all was ready our friend lifted her foot, and behold, the 'rantla had disappeared. With an unearthly shriek that still rings in our ears, the miserable girl began tearing off her hoop-skirt (which it seems the ladies have begun wearing again), and other portions of what may be esthetically termed the more pendant sections of her attire. To turn one's back, blush, and hold a six-oared, paper-shell gallinipper at arm's length, all at the same time, during a crisis like this, was indeed difficult, but we managed to do it until the inspection was over and our lady friend informed us, from behind a neighboring bush, that her fears were groundless, and that she had discovered the defunct tarantula pasted against the bottom of her shoe. This, in itself, is eloquent testimony to the

LIBERAL UNDERSTANDINGS

Of the Santa Barbara ladies.

We have often remarked the fact that most isolated communities are noted for possessing some peculiarity or habit in common, which almost seems as a trademark in distinguishing their citizens. This doubtless arises from the example set by some prominent man or local leader, whose ways are insensibly imitated by his less characteristic neighbors. We remember, for illustration, a little hamlet we once stumbled upon in the back-woods of Arkansas, in which every house, from the Squire's three-story to the smallest squatter's hut, had a balcony built on somewhere. Why, the natives themselves could not explain, except that they supposed it to be the

CORRECT THING.

Be that as it may, it is certain that whoever inculcated into the Santa Barbarian mind the instinct of thorough politeness did a good work extremely well. It appears to the gratified stranger within their gates that every person he meets has singled him out for particular display of courtesy, but he finds, at last, it is only the natural hospitable sentiment of the whole people. No stranger can fail to remark a fact so opposed to the usual experience in rural communities. Perhaps the pioneer in this graceful attribute is a certain much esteemed jurist living here, whose punctilious politeness is really something remarkable. In fact, it has become, so to speak, a sort of local landmark and a subject of universal pride. Indeed, they tell a story of this village Chesterfield which well illustrates his extraordinary affability. He was out shooting one day, and, finally, after traversing many canyons with much dignity but poor luck, he encountered an

ENORMOUS OWL

Blinking upon a branch. The legal luminary leveled his deadly weapon, took careful aim and was about to pull the trigger, when the victim solemnly ducked its head. Not willing to be outdone in politeness by the bird, the hunter paused and took off his hat. He then proceeded with his preparations for slaughter, when the bird again bowed. The gunner, of course, had to return the salute, and so it went on until the day passed, and the moonlight discovered the exhausted lawyer to his searching friends. During the explanation that followed

THE OWL FLEW AWAY.

While our coast painters of landscape are monotonously reproducing Yosemite views, or the still more overdone scenery around Duncan's Mills, it is surprising they so persistently give the lower California subjects "a wide berth," as the sailors say--though no one ever heard of a passenger having a wide berth, whether the sailors get them or not. There is one particular estate in this neighborhood that would kill an enthusiastic artist with hard work and despair in a month, such are its almost impossible natural beauties. Some day in the sugary 31 28 proximo it will make the everlasting fortune of some Eastern chromo factory. It is called

THE HOPE RANCHO,

But our "bucking" pencil refuses to undertake a catalogue of its panoramic perfections as seen from the group of velvet-covered hills in the centre. In fact, to get even with an inconsiderate public, which insists upon having something to read this melting weather entirely indifferent to the altitude of the writer's thermometer, we poetically taper off this wandering epistle with what Oscar Wilde would call an "Impression" of the locality in question: ON THE HOPE RANCHO.May's glorious sun unclouded shinesAnd not a bud unopened lingers;The roses laugh, and mid their vinesThe golden-petaled eglantinesTangle their fragant fingers.The epauletted-blackbird singsHis love-song in the velvet meadows,The orioles, on flaming wings,Flit through the orchard openings,And flash into the shadows.Afar the lake, a silver sheet,Girdled by swells of green, lies sleeping,The brooks that in its bosom meetI see not, but in their foam-shod feetI hear the ledges leaping.Along the fir-fringed mountain peaksThe vagrant vapors drift and double:The doubting dove its lover seeks;Faint heard the distant surf-bespeaksThe city's toil and trouble.Leave your dull haunts, ye human moles,Blindly for sordid treasures mining;By verdant paths seek brighter goals,And weave around your jaded soulsThe garlands May is twining.

To the unbiased eye of the temporary sojourner among the flower-scented grain and fruit-covered fields of our southern coast the oft-insisted-upon felicity of a farmer's life seems a very real and tangible thing indeed. One can hardly gaze at the vine-embowered cottages that crown every velvet slope, and nestle in every picturesque can˜on of this favored locality, without yearning to settle down to an apparent life of eternal peace, pruning-knives, agricultural reports and fresh milk. But, human or inhuman, nature is the same everywhere, a startling coincidence already commented upon, we believe. A serpent intrudes itself into every Eden, and when you congratulate the rancher of the period on his happy lot, he is perfectly sure of shrugging his jean-clad shoulders, and beginning to dilate upon his particular grievance, which, in this section, is

BUGS, ALWAYS BUGS.

To the ordinary dweller in cities the insect world is solely composed of that widespread and inevitable family, the Gallinipper Boardinghousibus, or the bedbug of commerce. The mild-eyed granger, however, as he sits upon the fence, which appears to be his normal occupation, by the by, and wipes the alleged perspiration and hay-seed of honest toil from his brow, tells you that there is no conceivable product in the wide domain of agriculture but what is preyed upon by its

PARTICULAR BUG,

Specially engaged for the season, and when the bug of the first part fails to get away with his regular royalty of two-thirds of 33 30 the crop, he is promptly reinforced by a numerous family of poor relations from Bugville, Bug County. Every green thing that grows has, at least, one chronic bug boarder, and some have so many varieties to support, that the granger, to believe his own child-like statement, passes his life in a hand-to-hand combat with his omniverous foe, and sleeps with his straw hat on his head for fear that it also will be retired from circulation. The apricot, for instance, has six varieties of resident bugs, and probably borrows an extra couple to complete the set when it gets up a square dance. As a natural result the farmers are compelled to many anxious conferences upon the best means of extermination. These conferences, I have noticed, always take place in the back rooms of the larger grocery stores, and the amount of bug-juice anxiously sampled at these sessions is said to be

QUITE REMARKABLE.

Speaking of bugs, reminds us of an incident of our first visit to the truly honorable and imposing Mission here. Will some habitue of our puzzle department rise and explain why it is that no traveler ever finds a living creature in a Mission building. We have entered them at all hours, and have never encountered anything save gilded magnificence and mildewed silence, as Swinburne might say, if he were properly provoked. The larger the building the surer it is to be utterly untenanted. On the particular occasion in question, however, a solitary priest occupied a chair near the altar, but atoned somewhat for his unusual presence by being fast asleep. He was not one of the early martyr style of prelates, whose pictures adorn the walls, with rope-tied frocks, sandaled feet and

GUN-SWAB HEADS,

But a comfortable-looking soul-saver, in country-cut store-clothes. The amplitude of the stomach, upon whose upper section his generous chin rested, plainly showed that if there was any gridiron-broiling to be done, he proposed to superintend the frying himself. This friar, we repeat, was snoring peacefully, when a professional temperance crank in the party pointed to an ominous red spot on the sleeper's nose, and began a 34 31 semi-impassioned harangue on the particular disgracefulness of high living and intemperance in the religious profession. In the midst of his remarks the frightful example sneezed and

THE SPOT DISAPPEARED.

It proved, after all, to have been only a wandering June bug that had settled down upon the good man's ave-intoner for a brief rest. The crank in question was profoundly disgusted.

Let us not be suspected, however, of endeavoring to disturb the good padre's slumber with Ingersollian levity. Far be it from us to rouse the sleeping preacher in this Morpheus-haunted climate, where the scent of poppies hangs heavy in the drowsy air--this land of the vine and the hammock. One pensively wonders whether the projected railroad that is already dragging its slow length hither will not, with its unseemly bustle, banish the brooding calm that hovers over the place

LIKE A BENEDICTION,

And one shudders to think of the unpleasant people it will precipitate upon the erst happy summerer. As things are now, seasickness is the barrier that keeps at bay the great army of shoddy, and the fatigues of travel daunt all but the better and more cultured class of Easterners, who have the time and means to be happy at leisure. Of course, nowhere, upon the inhabited globe, can one escape the check-suited English tourist. The mighty Nimrod of "the Strand, y'know," who regards America as one vast game preserve, and comes down to breakfast at the hotel with his

GUN UNDER HIS ARM,

And says to the clerk:

"My good fellow, cawn't you direct me to the best beffelo shooting back of the town?"

And who takes his breechloader with him every time he goes to the post-office.

For the accommodation of these sportsmen, Santa Barbara is provided with the usual property grizzly bear peculiar to all California watering-places. This traditional monster is carefully located, by formal agreement, among the hotel proprietors, on the most inaccessible and discouraging mountain in the 35 32 vicinity, and to which are directed the gore-waders in question, to the profound relish of the surrounding natives.

It is a most fascinating occupation for a hot day to sit upon the hotal piazza and watch through a glass the strapped and gaitered cockneys who have "unted tigers 'hin

THE PUNJAUB, ME BOY!"

Wending their toilsome way through the chaparral and peering into gopher-holes with cocked weapons. And then, to see them return at dewy eve with three woodpeckers and a meadow-lark on a string! There is a tradition, however, that once a hotelkeeper guided a party of bear hunters to the ravine at the foot of Grizzly Mountain, and, after parting directions for them to shoot the ferocious beasts as few times as possible, so as not to injure the pelts, he lay down to a quiet siesta behind a log. While thus philosophically engaged, a real, bona fide bear, that had escaped from some traveling menagerie, came out of the forest and bit him

IN SIX PLACES

Before he could resign and go home. The landlord still indignantly exhibits his scars, and says he was never so much outraged in the whole course of his professional experience.

Speaking of landlords, reminds us that it is about time tardy justice should be done to the hotel clerk of the period. It is the custom to write of that much-maligned personage as given over to languid dignity and diamond shirt-studs. These may be the leading characteristics of the metropolitan clerk, but the variety that attends to the multifarious duties of a watering-place hotel counter are birds of quite another feather. Independent of his qualifications as an accountant, this

CHESTERFIELD OF THE REGISTER

Must possess the tact of a Speaker of Congress, with the resources of a general officer in action. He must be something of a linguist, and much of a diplomatist. He must be ready to drink with the men and dance with the ladies. He must be everywhere at all times, cussed and badgered, and endure it all with the unwearying affability of a duck in a rainstorm. 36 33 And above all he must possess a patience and genial disposition that would cause old Job himself to gnash his teeth with pure envy. The Arlington here has such a wonder as the above. Tradition says that he was on the point of resigning from overwork during the height of the winter season, but the proprietor promptly secured the services of a particularly wicked Italian tenor to

FLIRT WITH THE MARRIED LADIES,

Thus taking the strain off the clerk in question, Mr. Northrope Cowles, and enabling him to pull through. But local tradition is responsible for many things, among others for a story so quaint and apt that I give it here. It seems that years ago there could be seen on a hill overlooking the town and the sea the spacious adobe of a Spanish free-booter--a sort of Californian Captain Kidd, who preyed upon the commerce of the southern Pacific, and who finally disappeared, sunk at sea by a Portuguese galley, it was said, and leaving large sums of ill-gotten gold buried somewhere in the vicinity of the town. Many a year did the simple natives search and dig for the ever-elusive treasure, until the very cattle were left unherded upon the hills that their owners might indulge in the feverish search for sudden wealth that disturbed the even tenor of their pastoral life. They were avarice-bitten. The good padre preached to no purpose against the sin of covetousness, until his parish was almost brought to distress and famine. One day the good man called his flock together and said:

"My children, I have had a vision.

OUR HOLY PATRON,

Santa Barbara, has appeared to me in a trance. She promises to aid your search for the pirate's gold. To give you good luck, she has blessed this bag of seeds, three of which you must drop into each hole you dig in quest of the treasure."

They reverently obeyed, and the fair hill-slopes were undermined with a new zeal. Time passed by, but when the discouraged treasure-seekers at length abandoned their quest, hundreds of full-fruited orange-trees held their shining globes to the 37 34 sun. These the natives gathered and shipped to the all-devouring maw of the great mining city that had sprung up in the north, and when the shining dollars they brought glittered in their sun-browned hands, the wise padre would smile and say: "Behold, here at last is the pirate's treasure, my children!"

If there should ever be a summer resort in a mountainous--or even a hilly country--that does not possess a "Lover's Leap," we wish it to be put in evidence at once. Of course, Santa Barbara possesses one of the dizziest altitude, although from a touching tableau we came upon as we gained the summit of the beetling crag in question, the other day, "Lover's Sleep" would be more appropriate. At all events, the one provided to satisfy the sentimental demands of tourists in this vicinity, has a satisfactory fall of some

FIVE HUNDRED FEET!

Quite enough to accommodate the most suicidally romantic of crossed lovers.

Not long ago the blooming but immature daughter of a neighboring rancher, who had probably been parentally restricted from sugaring her own tea, or molassesing her bread on both sides, determined to elope. She vanished, accordingly, with a corresponding idiot of the male species, and for three weeks their distracted relatives hunted literally high and low for them. That is to say, they searched both the valleys and mountains for the fugitives. While doing the latter, a pathetic note was discovered pinned to a tree at the very verge of the awful "Leap." It explained that the lovers had resolved to perish together, and that their mangled forms would be found at the bottom of the cliff, and where they wished their pulverized remains buried in one grave.

The two grief-stricken fathers repaired to the base of the gloomy precipice and began to excavate a last resting-place for their offspring, while the rest of the families searched for the fragments of the remains.

While engaged in this solemn work, a hired man approached and handed the father of the girl a telegram. It was

DATED FROM CHICAGO

And read: "Dear Pap--Am dead broke; send me money to get divorced and come home." The parents looked at each other. A close observer might have observed a slight spasmodic contraction of their left eyelids.

"If they have jumped clear to Chicago from up there," said one, looking above, "I guess we had better leave them to jump home again?"

"You bet!" emphatically responded the other; and then, looking at the hole, " 'Spose we call this a day's work, and quit right here."

And so shall we, gentle reader; so shall we.

As the good steamer Los Angeles tacked slowly out of the Santa Barbara harbor a mist, that was not born of the atmosphere alone, considerately shut out from sight the fluttering handkerchiefs that waved us " bon voyage " from the lessening wharf. We say "good" steamer advisedly, for the Los Angeles , though the smallest of the Goodall, Perkins & Co.'s boats, is, in nautical parlance, the "stiffest" of them all--a fact distinguishing nearly all screw steamers as compared with side-wheelers--something we have often noticed and never heard explained. The motion is not lessened in the former construction; in fact, it seems possibly augmented, but the effect is different. Without a single case, therefore, of seasickness, that

FORETASTE OF PURGATORY

For the high liver, we steamed up the beautiful coast, stopping at all the smaller ports with omnibus-like regularity. The fidelity with which we "backed and filled" into some of the most commercially unproductive landings said volumes for the kind-heartedness of the steamship company. Sometimes an old woman with a bag and an umbrella scuttled on board, while at several other maritime centers a box or two of butter and a coop of chickens rewarded Captain Wallace's genial efforts to render himself accommodating as a common carrier. At one place, after an hour's energetic whistle-blowing, to arouse the commercial spirit of the "longshoremen,

A SMALL YELLOW DOG,

The only living creature in sight, drifted languidly down to the wharf's edge and barked at us. He was evidently running the town in the absence of the Mayor.

The next landing, made in the small hours of the morning, and in a particularly dense fog, vividly recalled the simile of hunting for a needle in a hay-stack. The inhabitants of this alleged town--Gaviota, we think, was its name--snored profoundly on, oblivious to our frantic tootings as we fumbled around their harbor, endeavoring to make the wharf. While thus engaged, and the steamer was cautiously moving ahead, the Captain suddenly turned pale, screamed, "Hard-a-starboard!" to the steersman, and furiously rang the bell to reverse the engines. Everbody rushed on deck, and there, not thirty yards from our bow, a long, low, barnacle-covered boulder lay right in our track. As all hands braced up for the impending crash the rock suddenly vanished. It was a gigantic whale that had been caught napping in the fog. The first officer accelerated its retreat with an explosion of choice Kearneyisms, suggesting a practical rendition of

"THE TORPEDO AND THE WHALE."

In this plight we threaded and rethreaded the murky deep until a faint tinkle near at hand guided us into the haven where we would be, as the prayer-book has it. It seems that the Postmaster's wife, becoming annoyed at our incessant whistling, had finally risen and jingled her supper-bell out of the window, on the principle that a friend in need is a friend indeed. It was, fortunately, not low tide when we reached Santa Cruz--a circumstance which frequently happens, causing the passengers to be landed in small boats. This is accomplished, so we are gravely informed by a fellow-passenger, by lowering the victims over the side into the

BILLOW-BOBBED BOATS,

A task of especial difficulty in the case of ladies, for obvious reasons, the chaperones being lowered last of all; after which the valises of the party are carefully dropped down on their heads, or overboard, as the case might be. In the latter 41 38 instance, however, no extra charge is made for fishing them up bright and early next morning.

Santa Cruz strikes the newcomer with pleasant surprise, inasmuch as it lacks that hungry, lying-in-wait appearance of most long-established watering places. It has an independent, mind-your-own-business air that is pleasant and assuring. The well-built and green-embowered houses, and the diversity of view directly within the town limits, give it an agreeable peculiarity of its own. Mills and manufactories are seen, and the people have evidently other profitable occupations besides that of crowding visitors six in a room during excursion days. The hotels are numerous, and possess many merits resultant upon active competition. Formerly, "Pope's" was the chief place upon whose verandah our society belles were wont to gather upon their return from the beach, to tell sweet feminine fibs about the lovely baths they had taken, and this without changing a muscle of the fair faces upon which the untarnished enamel of the morning toilet still bloomed. This year, however, the

PACIFIC OCEAN HOUSE

Has made a not unsuccessful attempt to rival the Del Monte in the elegance of its furnishing and the perfection of its cuisine , and is already taking the lion's share of what is known in hotel parlance as the "nice people." Its popularity among the softest--we mean the softer--sex may possibly owe something to the almost twin-like resemblance its good-looking proprietor, Mr. E. T. Swift, bears to Edward S. Stokes--a similarity that extends even to the brevet Koh-i-noor solitaire mine host wears upon his left hand.

For a professed seaside resort, Santa Cruz has one inexcusably bad feature to offset its many good ones. In place of a handsome and commodious beach building, furnished with fine bath-houses, verandahs, retiring and refreshment rooms, a la Coney Island, Cape May, Newport or most anywhere, it has a collection of inadequate wooden buildings and a few muslin-shaded, sand-drifted benches for spectators. That its splendid beach is not made a more attractive gathering place for all hands and the cook, bathers and non-bathers, during the 42 39 morning hour, is a short-sighted bit of policy hard to account for. Something that goes far to atone for the lack of this source of attraction, however, is a very genuine one, in the shape of Professor Daily,

THE CHAMPION SWIMMER

And guardian genius of the bathing ground, who has been for half a score of years a familiar landmark of the place. To say that both visitors and residents regard this well-known teacher of swimming as the leading attraction of the resort is mildly phrasing the local pride in his life-saving prowess, as well as the general appreciation of his quiet and unfailing dry humor. In fact, the exploits, good stories and quaint sayings of "the Professor" are a godsend to the guest in affording a perennial source of conversation. One of his most quoted witticisms may be familiar to many of our readers, but is good enough to bear repeating here. One season this lineal

DESCENDANT OF NEPTUNE

Succeeded in saving from drowning just seven persons. By an odd coincidence, just six of these were men--all Hebrews; the seventh was a poor seamstress, employed by a visiting family. The Hebrews--and this was, doubtless, but another coincidence--all left without so much as saying "Thank you!" to their rescuer. The seamstress spent her spare hours working him a monogram-embroidered bathing suit, which he still proudly exhibits, but refuses to spoil by wearing. Just at the close of the same season he managed, with infinite difficulty and danger, to deliver another descendant of Abraham--a two-hundred-pounder--from an aquatic extinction. The next day the rescued party appeared upon the beach, and loudly demanded his savior. He was directed to the Professor, who sat upon the sand, darning his tights.

"Are you the man who pulled me out of the water?"

The swimmer modestly admitted the fact.

"Well, you shan't lose anything by it. Take that," and he handed the man-fish a

FOUR-BIT PIECE.

"What's that for?" asked Daily, while the bystanders crowded up to look at his windfall.

"For you, my good man; all for you."

"Wait and get your change," said the Professor, and he instantly handed back to the generous donor 35 cents.

The man stared inquiringly at the money.

"You see," exclaimed the swimmer, with an imperturbable face, "my charge for saving Jews is 15 cents--two for a quarter. If I should happen to save another of your family after this, you need only pay me 10 cents more."

And the most astounding part of the story is that the rescued party pocketed the money, and walked composedly off before the crowd had time to give him a few

PARTING GROANS,

As it doubtless felt inclined to do.

Another yarn, which the Champion tells himself with great enjoyment, is to this effect: A few seasons ago the family of one of our very riches mining capitalists visited the place. A young son of said plutocrat gave his father much trouble through his spendthrift habits, and was continually importuning "the guv'ner" for extra funds, which were not always forth-coming. One morning, during the bathing hour, the familiar sudden call for "Daily!" arose, and soon the teacher of natation was staggering up the beach, bearing in his arms another victim of the cramp, but whom, however, he had managed to rescue with less difficulty than usual. It was the son

OF THE BONANZAITE,

And as he lay, face downwards, on the sand, while Daily was proceeding with the usual vigorous rubbing to restore circulation, the subject of his energy said in a stage whisper:

"For heaven's sake, don't rub so hard, Professor! Don't you tumble to the racket?"

"What racket?" asked the astonished teacher.

"Why, don't you catch on?" continued the hopeful, in the vernacular of Young America. "I wasn't drowning. It's just a little job on the old man. To-morrow he'll send for you 44 41 and whack up a cool thousand for saving me. Then I'll stand in and divide with you."

"The devil you will!" roared the parent, who had just then come up unperceived; and he fetched the disgusted young financier a kick abaft the wheel-house that gave him a cramp in dead earnest.

At the close of last year, Prof. Daily had scored his

TWENTY-EIGHTH RESCUE,

And efforts are now being made by our Coast Representatives to secure him the current annual Congressional Medal for life-saving, a justly earned and too-long-delayed tribute to the leonine courage of a brave man. Meanwhile the fortunate possessor of twenty-eight full credits in the big record the parsons tell us is kept up above, goes quietly about his not-too-well-paid business of teaching others how to save themselves if needs be. And it is impossible to watch this deep-chested athlete sitting, as we saw him this morning, surrounded by a score of his fascinated worshipers--the children--without insensibly applying Bayard Taylor's apt lines: "The bravest are the tenderest,The loving are the daring."

A fashionable Santa Cruz diversion just now is going

FISHING WITH A PICKAX,

A quite feasible occupation, notwithstanding the incongruity of the idea. All one needs to pursue it is a couple of picks and as much muscle as the party can expend. Along the beach are innumerable big surf-worn boulders of sandstone, from the size of a Saratoga trunk to a brick house. These pulverize somewhat reluctantly under the blows of the pick, revealing a sort of clam, or rock oyster, imbedded in the solid stone. These are erroneously called date fish, and are most delicious eating. How they exist until they are released alive and kicking from the very heart of these seamless rocks is something we leave our unscientific readers to ponder over. Of course science offers a solution of the problem, but in the true journalistic spirit, we will reserve that for an extra.

The swell season, in a social, not a bathing sense, has not 45 42 quite yet set in here, but the sounds of preparation are going on everywhere. Strawberry dealers are prepared to charge two bits a box at a moment's notice, and already the roads to the big trees and other noted drives are being sprinkled at the rate of one pint of water per mile. The trees are really worth the trouble of visiting, though one feels a sense of indignation at beholding the simple majesty of their towering columns belittled by the snowstorm of visiting-cards pinned around the trunks of the largest as high up as the petty vanity of their affixers incited them to reach. One would think that the superb dignity of these heaven-towering monarchs of the forest would abash the small spirit that would turn from gaping at their vastness to connect it with the announcement that Julius J. Perkins, of Market Street, sells

READY MADE SHIRTS

As cheap as the cheapest--or, perhaps, lowest would be the better word. All the same, the redwoods are one of the local sights that "pay," and one regrets a drive in their direction none the more because the lady in the case is apt to return with a crick in her neck from much gazing upward, and her escort with a strained feeling in the left arm for some equally plausible reason, doubtless.

There is just one word in the entire dictionary that can be relied upon to excite the resident Santa Cruzian like a red flag waved at a bull. This word is simply "shark!" Last Summer a worthy old priest was alleged to have been attacked and bitten by a shark. The accident occurring on a Friday, it was thought that the briny monster had perpetrated a little joke, by turning the tables on the chief enemy of his species. The cold fact was that the good man had gotten into the same hole with a stranded sea-fox, while wading around, and received several cuts from the tail of that large but harmless animal in its frightened efforts to escape. Unfortunately, some farseeing speculator started the shark story, and offered

A HUNDRED DOLLARS

Reward for the sacriligious monster, dead or alive. Instantly a genial and popular citizen named Dr. Vaux, who takes the contracts for most of the practical jokes perpetrated in the 46 43 place, conceived an ingenious scheme. He passed the word to some fishermen to procure a specimen of the only species of shark known to these waters--the harmless, and, in fact, almost toothless basking shark. A huge one was accordingly caught in a pompino-net the next day and carried to the tent erected on the beach by the showman. Dr. Vaux had taken care to quietly tear out a section from the seat of the clergyman's bathing suit, which he carried to the tent, and then, in the presence of a large number of reporters from the city papers and visitors, he gravely made a post mortem examination of the shark's interior. Gently inserting his clenched hand into the fish's stomach, he presently withdrew it and exhibited the significant

BIT OF CLOTH.

The priest's tights were eagerly sent for, and lo! the fragment fitted exactly. The hundred-dollar reward was at once paid to the fishermen, and the innocent speculator coined money by his exhibition. It proved a poor joke, however, in a business point of view. Despite the solemn assertion of the priest that it was not a shark that injured him, and the assurance of scientific fish sharps that the man-eating variety never comes within four degrees this far north, there are not wanting many Bernhardt-built spinsters and dragon-eyed chaperones who sit in solemn rows on the beach at bathing-time and shake their heads forbodingly as their better-favored sisters trip laughingly in. These wall-flowers are said to gather in great force on hop nights, and are fervently alluded to by the rising generation as

SANTA CRUZ SOURS.

The Natural Bridge, about three miles from the town, is a curiosity of so exceptional a nature as to cause wonder that the residents do not set store by it as their chief attraction. It is nowise inferior to the famous one in Virginia, though of entirely different formation. Not far off is Moore's Beach, a perfect paradise for amateur conchologists. The beach is a perfectly flat table of sandstone, dotted with hollows that serve as natural aquariums. Each high tide fills these basins anew with a great variety of shell-fish, and in these waters every species is to be found. The State should at once start a school of 47 44 marine study here, under the charge of the energetic and scholarly

PROFESSOR HANKS,

Who is doing such wonders in the mineralogical way at the State Mining Bureau Museum, on Sutter Street--a collection altogether too little known and appreciated by our citizens.

A noticeable feature of the Santa Cruz streets is the entire absence of the vociferous itinerant peddlers who generally make night hideous in watering places. This is owing to a simple and yet effective scheme for their discouragement conceived by some of "the boys." Whenever one of these loud-lunged merchants established his stand an lit his flaming camphene lamp to begin his first evening's business, a plausible-looking citizen would approach and converse with the corn-salve or tooth-powder expert with the greatest affability. Presently he would say to the by-standers: "Boys, can't we get this gentleman something dry to stand upon?"

And forthwith an innocent-looking packing-box would be brought around the corner, and placed as a platform for the pleased orator, who would fail to notice a stout line fastened to it, and which stretched half a block down the street and into the door of the engine-house. Just when the merchant would be about transfixing the suspiciously large crowd with some Parnassian flight on the subject of bunions, the concealed fire-boys would suddenly yank on the rope, and the trader would execute a spread-eagle in the atmosphere, and

"TAKE A HEADER

Down below!"

Dimly seen from here on fine days across the bay lies Monterey, where the oldest and the newest American civilization stare at each other with equal wonder. Above the adobe of the fast vanishing pastoral days rises the many-gabled swell hotel of the age of gold--and brass. The war-painted squaws of our latter-day Diggers are now seen on the once happy hunting ground of the even less rapacious aborigine. The chase is as eager as ever, however, and scalp-taking flourishes as of yore. Perchance some of our lady readers will affect not to 48 45 understand these sanguinary similes, and the victor in a hundred tank and verandah-made conquests will, doubtless, shrug her rounded shoulders and lisp, "What on earth does the fellow mean?" All the same, however, they know, and we do, and so shall the high-foreheaded reader, after awhile.

Shocking as the statement may appear to patriotic ears, there is no question that the celebration of the Fourth in the good old style of our fathers is becoming a lost art. Great oaks from little acorns grow, and the hand that lit the first fire-cracker on Independence Day struck a blow at the popularity of that holiday that becomes more apparent every year. Those instruments of auricular torture have practically converted the great moment of national exultation into a season of

COMPOUND HEADACHES,

And he must indeed be an impoverished and unfortunate mortal who will stay in any large city during the bomb-exploding period. This fatal mistake of surrendering our great general holiday into the hands of hoodlums and small boys, to be made hideous by every Chinese-invented device for the rupture of the ear is, after all, the foremost reason for the gradual decline of any desire of "celebrating" among the more conservative elements of society.

Any one who visits the cool, handsome, peaceful-looking encampment here of the crack Companies F and G, and the Oakland Light Cavalry, on the hill just back of "Pope's," can but admit that the blue-coats have done well to escape the hot cobblestone of the city this sultry weather, and the thoughtful civilian, as he gazes at their snowy tents and well filled mess-tables, begins to appreciate one of the few compensations left to reconcile our amateur soldiers to the service. We say few compensations, because the lot of the militiaman under existing affairs

IS NOT A HAPPY ONE,

And there should be little surprise that interest in state military affairs is growing slacker every day. The cause of this is the total want of any incentive or healthy ambition among the privates. It is all very well to be an officer, with the privileges that always attach to gold-lace to requite their loss of time and trouble; but to the linesman the case is somewhat different. To be a private, even in the most socially popular of the companies, is simply to endure months of monotonous and generally incessant drilling, for the pleasure of wedging one's corns between the bowlders of Market Street on all sorts of tiresome occasions, and getting liberally abused by the papers and the public whenever they decline to become martyrs for the general amusement. For illustration, the

ABOVE-NAMED COMPANIES

Have been savagely commented upon by some for declining to parade in San Francisco on the Fourth, although the members were defraying their own private expenses in coming here. The fact is, that the whole militia system, as relates to the rank and file, needs a complete overhauling. There should be a dozen incentives for joining the National Guard where there is now one, and, above all, the members should never be required to parade on legal holidays. The mere fact that one is a National Guardsman should not shut him off from all the pleasures and relaxations ordinary people enjoy on those occasions. What officer will earn himself a sort of Upton-like fame by mapping out the necessary reforms in this direction, and inaugurating, as a consequence, a genuine militia boom that will give us a State command to be veritably proud of.

But as we were saying, the militiaman has at least one reward for his labor and self-denial. On occasions like this he can visit a watering-place economically and comfortably, and in a manner generally rendering himself an object of envy to the crowded, half-fed and generally miserable hotel boarder.

This Fourth the festivities have been carried on here in a manner that would delight the heart of a just-arrived Donny-brook-Fair Irishman. First, the military up at Camp Dimond get full of warlike enthusiasm and claret-punch, come down to 51 48 the main street and have "a bit of a scrimmage" with the citizens and the local fire-brigade boys. Then the citizens prime up with

INDIGNATION AND BEER

And go up to camp, to have it out with the "Lardy-dahs," as they esthetically designate our Kearny-Street warriors. Later in the programme everybody meets about two A.M. in front of the principal hotel and indulge in a good, wholesome, all-hands-around whoop-up, in which muskets are clubbed, and broken-heads and bunged noses become as plenty as cuss words, which is saying a good deal. It is all in the way of fun, however, and so far there has been no ill will produced from these eccentricities on either side.

The most resorted-to point of attraction at the Camp is "Headquarters," where the officers, who, by the way, considerably outnumber the men, apparently put in twenty-four hours per diem ladling out punch to their fair visitors, and opening bottles of dry Mumm with affable unsteadiness. There is something profoundly pathetic in the solemn enviousness with which the sentinels on duty regard this endless hospitality, in which they are not permitted to share. The other evening, however, some of the thirsty high privates could no longer endure the constant temptation, and resorted to one of those deep-laid, strategic moves, which, we are informed, are equally permissible in love and war. A huge bowl of fresh-made punch had just been placed under the ladle of the genial Captain Mix, when an orderly requested that officer's attendance outside. There the commandant found a number of his command, who desired to obtain singularly explicit instructions regarding the most trivial and irrelevant matters. Meanwhile

ANOTHER DETACHMENT

Had quietly proceeded to the back of the tent and cut a number of small holes through the canvas, just above the punch-bowl. When the captain returned to his hospitable duties, he was just in time to hear that unmistakable liquid rattle which denotes that the last few drops in a vessel are being sucked up through straws. With that peculiar presence of mind which may one day stand its owner in good stead on the field of 52 49 battle, the captain, instead of directing the arrest of the whole crowd, simply ordered another bowl of punch--a most satisfactory conclusion to all concerned.

The beach presented as pretty a sight as one could wish for the past few days. The bright-hued dresses of the ladies, with their crimson parasols, add to the effect produced by the different uniforms and brass buttons, while the white surf, now swollen high by the nearing fullness of the moon, and the blue-wrinkled sea beyond, forms a background for it all. Although the weather is hot unto sultriness, and the water as warm as though it had been heated for the purpose, the percentage of bathers is surprisingly small, especially among the ladies. The bathing-house keeper here, the obliging and

POPULAR "JOHNNY,"

Estimates that only four ladies out of every hundred bathe. Hearing this, some student of human nature undertook the task of asking a hundred consecutive females their reasons for this abstinence from the real chief pleasure of a seaside resort. With the preverbial indirection of womanhood, these all gave different reasons, mostly of the palpably tissuey description. Said excuses ranged clear through the whole gamut of feminine evasiveness, from having a "slight cold" to being afraid of "those nasty crabs." Only one gave the real reason, and she was a consumptive, with only four more months to live. This genuine reason was not in the least the one that promptly suggests itself to the masculine mind, for it is simply an impossibility to induce any one of Eve's daughters to admit that she has a bad figure. The cold facts of the case are that nowadays ninety-six women in a hundred use some kind of facewash, or preparation of powder, that cannot well be

ARTISTICALLY RENEWED

With the meager toilet facilities of a bath-house. This is the plain, unvarnished--or rather unenameled--truth of the matter, let the ladies protest as they will.

Speaking of the warmth of the water reminds us of a story they tell of an old lady who stayed at the Pacific Ocean House last season. Every morning regularly, just ten minutes before 53 50 her bath, she sent her servant down to place three heated bricks in the ocean, "to take the chill out of the water." If anybody doubts the truth of this story we refer him to Clay Greene, who intends to dramatize the incident in time for the fall theatrical season.

Among the notabilities to be seen on the beach now are Governor Perkins, General Dimond, Senator Neumann, General McComb and

A SIX-LEGGED COW.

The cow attracts rather the most attention, particularly when about to be milked. This operation requires just four buckets, three to be kicked over, and one to catch the milk.

General McComb looks as if the change from editing the Alta to doing the "stony-hearted jailer" business at Folsom agreed with him. The General's change of base, in that regard, has done much to mitigate the general feeling against the fair San Franciscan who pulled him out of the surf last season, thereby securing for both a full-page engraving in the Police Gazette . The popular indignation at the time was very great; in fact, it could hardly have been worse if the young lady had rescued one of the Bulletin's staff. A somewhat singular circumstance connected with said incident, is the fact that the General is one of the most active and powerful swimmers we have. From the critical manner in which he surveyed the assembled beauties to-day, it is dimly suspected that he is preparing to be

RESCUED SOME MORE.

There is nothing like a careful selection of the right moment to be--but as the genial Mac is no longer a "reptile contemporary," we'll go light on him.

Both the Aggie and the Nellie have managed to drift down this way, and opened their aquatic bars a few cable lengths from the beach. The smoke of many undeniable two-bitters ascends from their cock-pits, and the lazy breeze brings to sweltering crowds on the beach the melliflous popping of champagne corks. It is remarkable what a number of indifferent swimmers manage to reach these well-supplied craft under the circumstances.

Any ordinary similes would fail to give an adequate description of the crush and jam of poor humanity that afflict this place at this writing. At Monterey, the besieged hotel manager has relieved the strain by filling a long line

OF SLEEPING CARS

With guests; but here even the verandas are rented at good prices for sleeping accommodations, and a cellar door with an easy slope is considered quite a windfall. A friend who had, with thoughtless gallantry, given up his room to some shipwrecked ladies from Oakland, started out yesterday in quest of some place to lay his head. In every house he visited, four and five in a room was the rule. In a large, just-finished building near the Post-office, he found the floor carefully chalked off into narrow squares like a graveyard. The guest could occupy one of these, using his coat for a cover and his valise for a pillow, for one dollar per night. Looking further, he came to a small, six-room house, containing in all forty-three sleepers. The hostess occupied a mat in the parlor, while her husband reposed on a narrow lounge in the hall.

"I'LL TELL YOU WHAT

I'll do," said the woman, pitying our friend's forlorn condition. "My husband is a milkman, and has to rise at three o'clock every morning. Now you go off and play poker somewhere until that time. Then come around, and you can have his place from that on to breakfast time for two-and-a-half!"

But the outcast managed to do better. At the suggestion of Daily, the swimming teacher, he bought a rubber pillow, swam out and slept on the raft.

But, after all, the livery stable keepers secrete the muffin in point of prices during their brief harvest.

"I haven't a single horse that isn't engaged to-morrow from five A.M. until midnight," regretfully replied one lessee of jaded horseflesh to the writer's application. "The only thing I could possibly do for you is to let you drive a team between twelve and one, if you don't mind my fastening a box to the end of the pole."

"A box--what for?"

"Why, for oats--so they can eat their dinners while they're moving. There ain't much style about that sort of thing, I know, but, if it will suit, I'll only tax you a twenty for the hour."

The supper-room of a fashionable party has often been likened to a

DEN OF HUNGRY WOLVES,

But the expression but faintly depicts the scenes enacted in the dining-rooms of the hotels here during the past three days. The regular boarders have to take their chance with the transient ones, and it requires almost as much influence and coin to crowd in and get a seat before everything is gone as to achieve a Democratic nomination for Governor.

Last night the writer was sitting edgewise and eating with one hand at a six-foot-square dinner-table containing about twenty fellow-feeders, when our coat-tail was gently twitched from below. Looking under the table, we discovered the famine-pinched face of a leading San Francisco banker.

"What are you doing there?" we inquired.

"S-s-s-h! For heaven's sake don't give me away to the head waiter," replied the hungry wretch. "I got in through the window. If you have any pity for the starving, hand me down a cold chop or something."

We did as requested; and, as we listened to him eagerly choking down some macadamized pie and cracking our already well polished steak-bones, we felt that we were indeed laying up treasures in heaven.

Joking aside, however, it is truly pitiable to behold some of our wealthiest and most prominent San Francisco citizens reduced to fighting over the possession of an apple-core in the street, or driving their

FOUR-IN-HANDS

Round to the back gates of houses in the hopes of getting a cold potato from the cook.

To hark back to where this rambling epistle began, even Santa Cruz cannot escape the inevitable fire-cracker, as many a sleepless boarder can testify this morning. As these lines 56 53 are being written, a novel fight has been begun in front of the hotel. On either side of the street are drawn up lines of combatants, well supplied with boxes of cannon-crackers, from the ordinary size of a cigar up to the huge rolling-pin variety that explode with a report like a hundred-ton gun. These are hurled from one side of the street to the other, and many a burnt face, fractured finger and badly-torn hat is already the result. Through all the resultant and

INFERNAL DIN

An overworked darkey bootblack slumbers peacefully on his chair at the corner. His luxuriant mouth is open, and he snores like a steam siren in a heavy-- But look! a rear private in the cracker brigade softly approaches and inserts a cannon cracker in the colored brother's mouth.

Everybody suspends operations and holds his breath with suspense.

"Z-z-z-z--bang!"

Two of the nig's front teeth light on the paper before us,

It is too much; we must go down and take a hand in the circus.

Dramatists--especially the native variety--are always groaning at the want of fresh material for their purpose, and the perpetrators of "character" pieces in particular lament the alleged fact that all the individual "types" of humanity are written out and threadbare. To the casual observer, however, it would seem that the limits of a single seaside resort--in fact, a single seaside hotel--would furnish sufficient fresh and unmistakable character types to stock a whole dramatic library.

Let us, for instance, take a seat in the dining-room of any of our larger summer hotels, and, after confiding to some perspiring waiter an order for

THE "SEND-OFF,"

As a jockey acquaintance of the writer always designates the soup, and having nothing to do for the regulation half-hour or so prior to its appearance, let us look around the room and indulge in a little ante-prandial philosophizing.

That rather good-looking middle-aged man opposite is a genuine and unmistakable "type" of the first water, and yet one we have never seen crystalized on the stage since Shakespeare's time. He wears a large solitaire diamond on his right hand--the hand he scratches his nose with so often--and his clothes 58 55 bear the half-stylish, half-country cut peculiar to the mountain towns. The superfluously heavy watch-chain looped through his vest, and the peculiarly careful manner in which his well-oiled back hair is combed and arched forward around his ears, shows the well-to-do inland miner as plainly as though his occupation were painted on the shiny plug hat outside on the rack--and which, by the way, he would not wear through the streets of his mining camp for the biggest claim in the lode. This party is none other than the

"SUMMER BACHELOR,"

A class apparently on the increase all over the country. By this term we do not refer to the unmarried male of our species, by any means. The Summer Bachelor is a distinct and isolated branch of the human family. He is only seen in his present butterfly role during the middle summer months, and then always some hundreds of miles from his "roosting-place," as he would himself, perhaps, express it. Then he hastens to the largest watering-place, with his belt full of twenties and other claims to feminine consideration well to the fore. The larger part of the society "panned out" by the manners of these peculiar days receives him with open arms, and his paths lead through clover knee high. Now and then some jealous big brother, neglected counter-jumper, or other lineal descendent of the dog in the manger, intimates that the Summer Bachelor has a wife and perhaps a round dozen of olive-branches, up in Grass Valley or Bodie, but the fact doesn't disturb the even tenor of the gentleman's holiday career in the least. Everybody knows that he is a

RATTLING GOOD FELLOW,

And that he spends his money freely. The ladies accept his attentions and drives in complacent understanding of the fact that he isn't "on the marry," and with full knowledge that when the season is over he will flee as a bird to the mountains, only to appear again at the next migratory period.

The natural complement of the Summer Bachelor is that well-preserved, well-gotten-up, many-bangled lady of say thirty-five, sitting at the next table, and who casts numerous piquantly 59 56 meditative glances at the S. B. as she revolves an ear of corn between her pearly teeth, the pearls in this instance being more or less set in gold. She is down on the register as Mrs. George B-- or Henry F-- something, and sometimes, though not often, is accompanied by a small child. Her husband is often down in Mexico looking after a new mine, but more frequently gone East to visit his relatives. This interesting party belongs to another rapidly increasing ramification of our species. She is

THE GRASS WIDOW OF COMMERCE,

The bete noir of unmarried women, the terror of the married ones, and altogether the best abused and most heartily slandered of human kind. The Grass Widow is always hand-in-glove with the room clerk, and on the best of terms with the head waiter. It is she who always secures a seat favorable to the proper display of a dinner toilet, and at the same time commanding a good view of that interesting locality known as the "Gents' Transient" table, at which all the male new-comers are placed for the first day after their arrival. The Grass Widow somehow always possesses a pretty foot and undeniably plump shoulders and arms, and is proportionately given to high-heeled slippers and black lace sleeves. She has a knack of appearing often in the halls in charming Watteau wrappers and equally charming confusion, and accomplishes other feats of female strategy bitterly exasperating to her critical sisters.

After pausing a moment to tell the long-lost waiter whether it was oxtail or vermicelli soup you wanted, another "type" attracts the observant eye. It is one that can readily be recognized. That small, thin, oldish woman, with snappy black eyes, saffron countenance and firm-set lips. With rigidly immoveable face and general watch-dog demeanor she sits, eating little and never by any chance uttering a word. She is the

HEIRESS CHAPERONE

Of the period. Hired or appointed by some millionaire to act as a social policeman over some coltish "catch" of eighteen or twenty, she glances with defiant hostility towards every masculine eye turned her way, and generally manages to spoil both 60 57 her charge's temper and digestion the first week. Her own were spoiled many years ago.

The gentleman nearer the door, who drums on the table with his fingers and softly whistles as he waits for his beef, is another pronounced character. He wears a check coat with watered-silk facings, and a large cluster pin of off-stones is carefully pinned over a frayed button-hole on the ample bosom of his shirt. His face is smooth, and he seems to be "counting the house" with a speculative eye as he surveys the guests. This is the Business Manager, Treasurer and

MAMMOTH END MAN!!

Of a traveling minstrel troupe, hastily improvised in the metropolis for barn-storming among the watering-places.

Speaking of actors, that couple at the end of the room unconsciously carry their profession on their sleeves for daws to peck at. It is a leading man and his bride, naturally a leading lady of a city theatre, on their wedding trip. There is no mistaking the animated and vivacious manner in which they emerge through the L. U. E. of the dining-room door, nor the studied old-school "drawing-room-of-the-Earl's-castle" style in which he places her chair. The naively involuntary manner in which they carve bits of bread on the plates, in the stage-banquet mode, as well as the very distinct asides in which they indulge, and the care they evince in always facing their audience, "give away" their calling at once.

The best of all living comedians--or dead ones, for that matter--.

JOHN SLEEPER CLARKE,

Once told the writer that so entirely enthused, so absorbed body and mind had he become with his art, that only his stage life appeared to him to be real, and the daily routine of practical existence a most tedious and ill-done bit of acting imaginable. No matter where he happended to be--in whose company, or under what circumstances--he was always diligently, mentally practicing and rehearsing emotions and sensations he wished to perfect himself in portraying. To one person he strove to appear, in all seriousness, a consistent miser, to 61 58 another a giggling fool, to another a reckless libertine. He would persistently affect the most extraordinary and opposite traits of character, to observe how his impersonation impressed the beholder in real life. When his sister, whom he loved very tenderly, died, he affected the most reckless indifference, and shocked the other mourners by joking at the funeral. This was simply because he was studying the part of a heartless son for a new play. One day at the Girard House, in Philadelphia, and before Clarke had permanently left the

HEAVY VILLAIN LINE

For the comic, he greatly terrified an old gentleman who sat opposite at the table, by regarding him with a stealthy, murderous stare and by occasionally whetting a carving knife on the edge of his chair. The old party finally fled to the office in a fright and complained that there was a maniac up stairs who wanted to murder him. When this was repeated to Clarke he said, much delighted:

"Yes, yes--he is quite right. I wanted to impress him as a maniac --not as a simple desperado that wanted to kill him. What a pity, too, that I can't do it just in the way of study!"

They tell a story of James O'Neill to the effect that when he was courting his charming wife he could never muster up courage to propose, on account of the depressing arrangement of the furniture in her parlor. One day, however, the idea occurred to him to move the sofa into the center of the room--the position, it will be recollected, it always occupies in society dramas. Standing behind this and leaning upon the back in the most approved Montague style, habit soon exerted its power, and the handsome James easily popped the momentous question, even without the aid of

SUBDUED FIDDLING

By the leader of the orchestra. If this story is not true, it is at least interesting, from an intrinsic, wild, weird and mysterious beauty that is all its own.

The fat and resplendent old lady who has just waddled into a seat on the right is another type entitled to a work here. This is the matured wife of some retired business man--some well-to-do, possibly very rich, lumber merchant or coal dealer. 62 59 She is childless, and had devoted the shady years of her life to the accumulation and exhibition of jewelry. She is not vulgar in the intrusive sense. She knows no one, speaks to no one, but sits so many hours a day on the porch or in the parlor, a shining and glittering mass of bracelets and rings, reminding one of a jewelry store with the

FRONT DOOR OPEN.

She is mildly satisfied with the attention she excites, and goes to bed punctually at 9:30.

The young man over there, with an esthetic tight-fitting green suit, is one of a large delegation from Kearny Street. He is a "masher" of the juvenile sort, has a cigarette-holder for the head of his little cane, flirts with women old enough to spank him, knows it all, and is generally anxious to be considered "fly."

During the early part of the season this exotic is in high feather. Young women outnumber young men at watering-places in the proportion of four to one, and for a time the immature gallant finds his services in demand. He dances in the parlor, sings "Razors Flying in the Air" on the verandah with immense eclat , and his fore-shortened legs and toothpick-shoes can be seen protruding from beneath half the sand-hugging parasols on the beach. He is hilarious in the surf, and vociferously to the fore at picnics, but with the advent of his older and more substantial congener there comes a nipping frost, and it is a

COLD DAY AND A SLIPPERY EVENING

For the primary class.

Next, let us observe that portly and dignified old gentleman, in the old style blue swallow-tail coat, and white choker. What a picture of solid respectability and commercial solvency he looks, with his ruddy face, his snow-white hair and whiskers, and his gold-rimmed eye-glass! But why does every one avoid and gaze upon him with suspicious scrutiny? Why do parents point him out to their offspring, with many a whispered injunction as to honesty being the best policy in the long run? It is because the old party is a bank president, and the b. p. always takes in the Springs on his way to San Quentin.

Then there is the young lady with the muslin dress and curls, who props a Seaside Library novel against the castor and emotionalizes over the woes of Lady Winnifred Weepers, with her mouth

FULL OF SUCCOTASH.

She doesn't "rig out" much, to use a phonetic localism, so far as dresses are concerned, but she has brought instead a box of silk-embroidered stockings as the next best thing, and, as a consequence, is devoted to reading in the hammock. In fact, she is called

"THE HAMMOCK FIEND,"

And forms a type more generally numerous at our inland resorts.

That well-mannered gentleman with Eastern-cut clothes and a bright red spot beneath his temples is by no means the junior partner of an undertaker's establishment, as one might gather by the inveterate melancholy of his appearance. He is simply the representative of a constantly-growing element amid our more southern resorts--the "Eastern Consumptive," trying to cheat nature and the doctors by spinning out the six months of life allotted to him to a year by means of California's dry atmosphere. They have all the same hopeless, tired expression, these poor fellows, waiting for old Father Time's harsh knock at their doors, and one instinctively shows them the deference and consideration due to the surely doomed. To change the old Roman phase:

THOSE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE ARE SALUTED.

And then there is the aggressively pretty young married woman, whose husband comes down on the Saturday night's train, and goes back to town Monday morning, on what are called, with facetious sarcasm, the "Daisy Trains." This lively and altogether agreeable form of the six-button species is as demure as a deacon over Sunday, but by Wednesday has as many strings to her bow, or beaux to her string, as the most energetic unmarried flirt in the house.

They tell a story of one of these fascinating matrons who stopped at Monterey this summer. Her husband, who is of the ultra jealous kind, returned a day earlier than expected, 64 61 and with such suddenness as to almost disagreeably interrupt a game of chess Madam was playing eith a good-looking broker staying at the hotel. It was late, and the couple soon retired. The next morning the husband, to the profound discomfort of his wife, preferred to have breakfast sent to the room, and immediately after took his spouse to the depot, and left for Sacramento, their home. Late the next day the hotel-manager received a dispatch from the above-named city:

"For heaven's sake, open the closet in private parlor No 16 at once!"

This request was expeditiously complied with. As the door swung open, the limp, half-suffocated, famine-wrecked form of the broker fell on the floor, with a heartrending groan.

There is a moral in this story, though there is nothing

PARTICULARLY MORAL

About the story itself.

The very waiters themselves--some of them--are types of so effectively dramatic a nature that it is surprising some lynx-eyed Boucicault has not niched them in the Thespian temple of fame long ago. Even the orthodox down-at-the-heel, chuckle-headed soup-spiller of the Milesian type has never been properly portrayed; the individual who, armed with a dirty napkin and impenetrable stupidity, takes your order and then disappears from human sight and knowledge for untold cycles of time. We observed a pathetic scene in a south-coast hotel dining-room, not long since. While we were carefully stretching ourself over an early breakfast, an old gentleman sat at the same table patiently awaiting the arrival of his meal. It was obvious that he had come down early for the purpose of getting waited on with expedition, and his countenance displayed all the fleeting shades of long-delayed

HOPE THAT MAKETH THE STOMACH SICK.

He was there at luncheon, and at dinner he still sat wistfully eyeing the swinging "kick-door" through which he evidently believed relief would yet appear. Just as we finished our black coffee, the missing waiter who had evidently been asleep in the pantry, or off on a picnic, suddenly bore down on the patient guest with a soft-boiled egg and a plate of toast. 65 62 The old man sprang to his feet, and fervidly shook the surprised coffee-splasher by the hand.

"I knew you would return again!" he said, with an emotion-choked voice; "they started a rumor a couple of hours ago that you had eloped with the cook, or dropped dead with the heart disease or something, but I said, `No! gentlemen; give him time; give him a chance; it will all come out right in the end; I knew you would turn up again, if only to bring me an oil-cruet with a fly in it.'"

There wasn't a dry eye in the room as the famished old descendant of Job sat down and swallowed his egg whole.

Another variety of waiter is the young man of alleged good family, who has been cleaned out at keno, and who is forced to work his passage, so to speak, until the maternal heart at home causes the paternal pocket to relent in the shape of a remittance. Last season the spendthrift son of a Portland banker, who had unavailingly telegraphically besieged the

PATERNAL FOUNTAIN-HEAD

For "more mud," found himself at Monterey without a "stiver"--whatever that is--in his pockets. One morning, on entering the breakfast-room, he beheld his just-arrived "governor" and the rest of the family seated at a table. After a moment's reflection the prodigal decided upon a strategic movement to replenish his poker-exhausted funds. Borrowing a waiter's jacket and apron, he threw a soiled napkin over his elbow with true professional grace, and stepping behind his parent's chair demurely asked for his order. The banker stared at the apparition with astonishment.

"What on earth does this mean, sir?" he sternly inquired, while the rest of the family got ready to faint.

"The fact is, pa," said the dummy-waiter, humbly, "you refused to send me any coin, and--and so I was forced to earn an honest living, somehow."

But the old gentleman had been there before. After scrutinizing the hopeful a moment through his spectacles, he said:

"I'm mighty glad to hear it, Ned, my boy. This looks something like real reform at last. Lemme see, if you can bring us six oxtail soups for a starter. And as for fish--"

But Ned had gone. The "Guvner" is probably waiting for that soup yet.

But, after all, the

FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT,

The saddle-tinted man and brother, makes the only perfect waiter yet discovered. Even the rather depressingly dignified individual known as the Hampton student-waiter evinces the eternal fitness of things by the classical manner in which he removes the crumbs, and his ability to parse the butter in six languages. Major McGinley says that once, while lunching at the Palace, he was waited on by one of these erudite plate-polishers. Wishing to say something particularly confidential to a fair vis-a-vis , the Major began pattering away in French of the home-made Mills Seminary sort. Presently the waiter, with the best Parisian accent, said:

"Excuse me, sir; but would you not prefer to address the lady in Turkish?"

"Turkish?" replied the Major; "I don't know Turkish. Why?"

"Because it is the only modern language I don't understand. As it is, I will retire."

Of course, it would hardly do to point out that

CHECK-COATED TRIO,

Who have just entered, and are making their way with a peculiar, giraffe-like shamble down the room as types of a hitherto unclassified kind. Everybody everywhere recognizes the regular English globetrotter, a genus of which one individual is as much like another as are Chinamen. The sandy, mutton-chop whiskers, the abbreviated coat, the highwater pants, the shoestring necktie, and the big, lowheeled shoes are as familiar to hotel sojourners as bean soup.

That slovenly-looking customer, with dusty broadcloth coat and a green tie, whose vociferous conversation and fist-hammering appalls his fellow eaters, is the ward politician recruiting, after his caucus labors, on his dividends from

"THE SACK."

He is engaged in acquainting his most uncomfortable 67 64 neighbor with the important fact that he is to receive a unanimous nomination for Deputy Pound-keeper.

"The boys know me!" he shouts, clutching his victim's knees under the table to insure attention, "and they daren't, sir--they daren't refuse me. They knew the minute Tim Howler began to kick there'd be a split that would knock the whole platform into kindling wood, sir; kindling wood!"

But what is this somber procession that files down the center of the room and entirely occupies a family table, from the corpulent, red-faced father, down to the baby chair under the wing of the equally massive mamma. All the family have black eyes, black bangs and eagle noses. The bare arms of the females are fairly shackled with bracelets, and even the fingers of the males are resplendent with diamonds. Both heads of the family

GRUNT AUDIBLY

As they eat their way sturdily through the bill of fare, pausing only to forget their napkins are not handkerchiefs, and to throw their bones under the table. This is the familiar watering-place Hebrew of the coarser sort, and as far removed from the more cultured representatives of the race common to San Francisco society as the Tar-Flat hoodlum is to the educated American. In fact, no class are more annoyed by the self-assertive vulgarity of what is known in the East as the "hand-me-down" style of Jews than the better grade of their own people. It is this hoodlum type of the people in question that caused the complete closing of Aptos last year as a resort, and has done much to imperil the popularity of Santa Cruz this season.

But there are more human "types" besieging our pencil's point for description than the leaden types at our disposal are adequate to record.

We have room for but one more, and that is the young lady

WITH THE BABY STARE.

This peculiar exponent of the latest agony in visual fashion has been unusually numerous this season. The young person affecting this pleasing device for exciting admiration is commonly of the tamely-statuesque description, and relies solely 68 65 upon the automatic movement of her optics for her scant claim to attention. She eats very little, being chiefly engaged in watching for the regard of some masculine observer, upon which she at once elevates her eyes to the ceiling with an expression of mildly-rapturous infantile astonishment, and so remains until, figuratively speaking, the curtain has been rung down. In fact, in the wise economy of nature, this abstract young party was doubtless intended exclusively for the tableau industry. Obviously there is no other occupation or use for her in all the wide domain of human utility. However, the Baby Stare profession is a harmless one, at worst, and possibly has its æsthetic recommendations as well. It is only when the habit is adopted by razor-edged old maids, or well-fed matrons of forty-odd, that it becomes positively ruinous to the beholder's nerves. We remember one obese and antique party, with a false front and a double chin with a pimple on it, who--

But the memory is too much for us.

To the ambitious quilldriver there is something peculiarly exasperating in encountering a subject that proves too much for his powers of description. To find his shop-worn stock of adjectives and superlatives entirely inadequate for the purpose in hand, is an experience that must have been frequently annoying to many a "Summer" correspondent on his first visit to the Del Monte Hotel. Those wholesale distributors of journalistic taffy must often feel a good deal like the down-East countryman, who, on his first view of Niagara Falls, gazed at the mighty waters awestruck for a few moments, and then solemnly exclaimed:

"GOSH ALMIGHTY! AIN'T IT WET?"

That the Del Monte--or El Monte, whichever is right--is by all odds the handsomest and most elegant watering-place hotel in this country, if not in the world, is something the guide-books and prospectuses have this long time dinned into our ears, both effectively and justly. We believe no one disputes this proposition, but we have, for all this, never seen any description that gives one even an intelligent idea of the place as it really is. It is one of the inherent defects of language that it cannot convey that fine, intangible quality of a person or place, its individuality, and without this the most apt description becomes but partially satisfactory at best. For illustration, the many engravings and pictures of the Del Monte, encountered by the westcoming traveler, show nothing but a large and not overelaborate hotel of the Eastern sort, with the 70 67 stereotyped bathing-beach in the background. The fact is, that the beach itself is

A LITTLE-RESORTED-TO

Attraction, and even the surrounding drives and the town itself are accessories that hardly detract from the hotel building itself, and above all the wonderful and unique beauty of its grounds. The latter cast everything else of the kind so much in the shade that the transient visitor hardly takes away with him a vivid recollection of any other feature. The grounds surrounding the Del Monte were laid out on a very comprehensive system, indeed. In the first place, nature started in and dotted a velvet lawn with magnificent live oaks, after which the railroad company began, and is still carrying out, a system of landscape gardening that must already have cost a fortune, and the results of which are fairly marvelous. In every direction the eye opens up new vistas of beauty, each leaf-arched aisle seeming lovelier than the last, and everywhere stretches the emerald-green turf carpet, whose figures are composed of limitless disigns wrought in every rainbow-tint known to horticulturists. A surprising instance of the results produced by patience and skill in the cultivation of flowers is seen in numerous mottoes and legends they are formed to spell, some of these floral inscriptions being a hundred yards long, with letters four feet high. It is indescribably novel and sentimental to look out of one's window and read upon the hand-painted satin sward, as it were, such touching words as

"NO CASH, NO HASH,"

"Mixed Drinks Two Bits," "Guests Without Baggage Must Pay in Advance," "No Beer to be Drunk in the Parlor," and the like.

It would require the professional resources of a real-estate auctioneer to fitly describe the commodiousness and internal adornments of the hotel building itself. Suffice it to say as to its external appearance that if "pure Eastlake" means, as in this instance, a rare combination of elegance and picturesque effect, then it is no wonder the ideas of that admirable architect are making so unmistakable an impression on modern building.

But there is no rose without its thorn, and perhaps the most noticeable point that will bear kindly criticism here is the obvious presence of too much check-rein among the hotel employees, taken as a whole. Not that this anti-American weakness asserts itself unpleasantly, but still a sort of melancholy hauteur, a languid dignity, seems to pervade the establishment, from the room-clerk down to the window-washer, that is very depressing and esthetic indeed. Dignity and style are all very well in their way, but, after all, the home-like "What-can-I-do-for-you?" "How-are-you-getting-along-anyway?" sort of thing is the true secret of making permanent out of transient guests, and "don't you forget it," Manager S--.

The Del Monte might aptly be called the Hotel of Magnificent Distances, from the manner in which its numerous out-buildings and adjuncts are situated. When one desires, as one often does, to step into the bar-room, just to see if Bill Jones is there, he has to walk a generous block through the trees. The bowling alley can be seen through a glass on clear days, and when one wants to hire a team he first hires a carriage to be driven for the purpose down to the stable, which lies off somewhere in the

DIRECTION OF PESCADERO.

But when the bath-house or "tanks," is his objective point, the guest takes his trusty rifle, three days' provisions and a compass, and sets forth in a sou'west-by-sou'direction, and trusts to luck.

If Sancho Panza blessed the man who first invented sleep, how he would have embalmed in unctious benediction that superior enhancer of mundane luxury who conceived, but did not patent, the idea of heated sea-water swimming baths. The

DEL MONTE TANKS

Probably afford the most exquisite sensation of physical bliss that human nerves are capable of experiencing. To float on one's back in this clear, luke-warm flood, dreamily gazing at the tropical plants that festoon the roof, and feeling the melted velvet of the water softly lapping one's languid limbs at every breath, is to be happy indeed. Lucullus was but a novice at 72 69 the fine art of bathing, after all. One feels independently wealthy under such circumstances, and nothing but the sudden engulfing of a pint of salt water, caused by some funny dog of a diver bobbing serenely from below into the small of one's back, causes you to relinquish the heaven-sent hallucination that you are sliding down

A BUTTERED RAINBOW

With a chunk of maple-sugar in your teeth.

The great advantage of the series of tank system practiced here, is that, by occasionally shifting from one tank into another heated a few degrees warmer, one is enabled to bathe a very long time without diminishing the circulation, and to finally emerge feeling like a giant refreshed. That there is nothing enervating about heated salt water was sufficiently evident from the manner in which that modern Crichton, Col. Horace Fletcher, President of the Olympic Club--who is one of the most regular swimmers this season--turned astounding flip-flaps into the water, perambulated the bottom like a crab, or circumnavigated the tank like a human steamboat, with the head of his graceful, Castilian-eyed wife tranquilly resting on his stalwart shoulder.

TALKING OF CRABS,

They tell a story of a would-be funny broker, who, last season, adopted a most fiendish method of getting even with one of the chronic flirts who are said to make the piazzas here lively later in the season. He obtained half a dozen energetic crabs from the fishing-beach, and, watching for an opportunity when no one was in a particular tank except the inconstant fair object of his vengeance, he dropped in the crustaceans (way-up term for crabs). The young lady continued her natatorial exercises (jam-up for paddling) a few minutes longer, when she suddenly uttered a blood-curdling shriek, and was helped up the ladder with a crab hanging on to her pink little toe. She had several consecutive epileptic fits while the marine corn-doctor was being removed. The Mephistophelean glee of the broker, however, gave him away, and for fear of some counter-trick, he decided to bathe early in the morning thereafter. A few days after that, the bath-house keeper 73 70 was startled by some terrific yells, and, hastily entering the tank-house, he beheld the broker floundering out with a big, jagged-toothed spring trap clenched on his heel.

"Who the devil put this horrible thing in the water?" roared the broker.

"I DID, SIR!"

Sweetly replied the crabbed young lady aforementioned, stepping out of a bath-room. "I put it there to catch those horrid crabs, you know."

The broker went home on a crutch.

The town of Monterey proper--the "dear old Monterey," concerning which school-girls, and other easily-reimbursed writers, have worked off so much melodious gush in certain weekly papers--consists of an "ancient and fish-like" collection of adobe houses, and is populated by five men, two boys and a goat. There can be no mistake about this census, as these eight inhabitants stand round ten hours a day, and stare at passing teams with a grave expression of Rip-Van-Winkle wonder in their sleepy eyes, as though they hesitated between turning in for another twenty years' snooze and staying up a while to see the fun.

There is a whaling station here, employing a large number of red and green boats, which are all carefully placed under sheds, evidently to keep them from accidentally getting wet. This fact, together with a singular absence of the far-reaching odor peculiar to oil-boiling localities, induced us to interrogate a

PIRATICAL-LOOKING CHAP

In a red cap and long boots, who was carefully sharpening a harpoon on a grindstone. This picturesque party displayed an amazing ignorance on the subject of his profession. All an extended cross-examination elicited was the fact that this hardy cruiser of the deep supposed that whales were caught in nets, a dozen or so at a time. Finally we abruptly said:

"Look here, my man, did you ever really see a whale in your life? Come now, honest Injun."

The intrepid harpooner scratched his head, took his pipe out 74 71 of his mouth, looked up and down the beach, and then answered softly:

"Well, between you and I, stranger, I never did. I wouldn't get into one of them dern boats for a fortune. The fact is, we are just hired by the railroad and hotel company to stand around and make believe. They say it looks toot-too and asthmatic. It comes high, but the guests must have it."

The drive to Cypress Point, the most affected point of interest in the vicinity, is an illustration of what unlimited coin, filtered through pickaxes and rammers, can accomplish. For fifteen miles a macadamized road, as smooth and joltless as a billiard-table, winds through stately oak and cypress groves, and along a billow-dashed background in its rocky outlines and fascinating in its seething wildness. On the very edge of one--just such a sturdy

STORM-FRONTING HEADLAND

As William Black loves to describe--we found erected the mustard-stained, egg-shell-strewn tables of that landscape-destroying ghoul, the modern camper-out. With a really congenial and well balanced party, there is no more sensible or charming way of utilizing a vacation, but a large proportion of the campers one sees in this vicinity seem to have no more enjoyable means of recreation than sitting along the roadside moodily munching their eternal sandwiches, thickly drifted with the dust of passing teams.

It will convey a better idea of the spacious nature of the Del Monte when we state that while it it is superficially of the size of many a six-and eight-hundred-guest-holding hotel of the East, the real capacity of the house is not half so great, on account of the greater size of the rooms and their arrangement in suites. Hence, though guests receive truly palatial accommodations in ordinary times, a sudden, unexpected influx easily crowds the house into the four-cots-in-a-room state of things, so common in Eastern watering-places. The Boston excursionists last week, for instance, had rather an omnibus time of it, from all accounts, though they did not grumble, but took it out on the baked beans with truly Emersonian (this means the late Boston Emerson, not Billy) philosophy. A 75 72 veracious-looking gentleman assured us that upon the first night of the arrival of the Hubonians he was playing a game in the billiard-room, and was much annoyed by the sinister manner in which he was watched by four

GLOOMY-BROWED MEN,

Who kept snapping their watches and making frequent remarks anent the slowness of the players. Finally, one of these spectators disappeared, and presently my informant, in putting his foot under the table to make a masse shot, planted it square on the face of a sleeper. It turned out that the four travelers had pre-empted the table for sleeping accommodations--two on top, two underneath. One of the lower-berth fellows had become unable to sit up any longer, and so turned in.

Of course, we tell this pathetic story just as we heard it. If the R. R company sues the Post for $500,000 damages in consequence we shall take it back in the most comprehensively ample manner in our next letter, accompanied by a diagram and map.

There being no hills in the vicinity high enough to supply the scenery with that almost indispensable article, a "Lover's Leap," the hotel management have gone to great expense in getting up a rival sensation for the romantic portion of the guests, in the shape of a

RELIABLE SUMMER GHOST.

The legend attached tells how the old Spanish ranchero, who owned the site of the Del Monte away back in the ante-Yankee days, had a beautiful daughter, whose brightest smiles shone upon the penniless and prohibited young fisherman whose skiff often bore him to a stealthy rendezvous on the moon-silvered beach. Despite the stern vigilance of the father he could discover nothing, and finally his suspicions that the lover sometimes caught a mermaiden in his net were allayed, and he started to rodero some cattle on a far distant range. He was absent some months, and, in the meanwhile, twins came "to gladden the scene," as the novels would phrase it. The old gentleman raised particular hades, as might be expected. The girl resolved to fly to an exclusively fish diet 76 73 with her deuce of hearts, one under each arm. But the stony-hearted father kept a vigilant watch over his grief-racked prisoner, and even kicked at the unusual milk bill, as a refinement of cruelty. This continued until the exasperated pursuer of the agile pompino resolved to make a sortie and rescue his wife at night. When his party arrived on the ranch, however, he found the old rancher plowing by moonlight, having watched all day. This was much too much, and the infuriated fisherman sneaked silently up behind the old man on the just-turned farrow, and exterminated him with an abalone shell in the

TOE OF A LONG STOCKING,

Or some other deadly weapon--thus teaching him a lesson by which fathers of the present day would do well to profit. The regular schedule result of this homicide is that during the summer months the ghost of the old rancher, plowing by moonlight and hammering his shadowy steed with a spectral lath, can be seen--though exclusively by guests of the hotel--in a field back of the stables. Be that as it may, the number of cloud-muffled young ladies who go out to see the ghost with their escorts (in crowds of two), and who come back saying how interesting it all was, and that they mean to go again, is very extraordinary as showing the deep-seated

LOVE FOR THE SUPERNATURAL

Implanted in the female breast.

And this brings us to the statement that the regular season is not yet far enough advanced to entitle the softer sex to the attention in this epistle they properly deserve. The standard society flirts, the conquest-hunters among our local Nobility, have not yet feathered their heads and arrows, or selected their beaux for the chase. As yet, one can hear one's self speak in the dining-room, or saunter by the tennis-court without getting one's eyes knocked out by an erratic ball; and at present Ballenberg, the melodious Teuton, is

MELODIOUSLY TOOTING

To a somewhat scantily-filled ballroom on Saturday nights. 77 74 But a week or two will make all the difference, and among the lookers-on in Venice, when the real agony begins, the discriminating guest will doubtless recognize the pious and ingenuous countenance ofDERRICK DODD.

SAUCELITO, June 8, 1882.

DEER SUR: While you air a doin up off ther wattering plases on this coste wi doint you ring in Saucelleto, it is ther boss plase fur helth an cheep bord an doint you forgit it, give us a good send off please.

geo gluckey

prop'r ocean house.

The above timely letter, which we print verbatim, recalls us to a sense of our plain duty as impartial journalists. What, indeed, we ask ourselves, is the use of traveling hundreds of miles along the coast to describe fashionable summer resorts, when, right across the bay, under our very noses, as it were, exists a spot whose superior attractions to the summer sojourner shine forth with the glittering contrast of a pewter dollar in a mud-puddle? Will we give it a "good send off?" Well, we should smile!

In the first place, we wish to hold up to the scorn of mankind the envious "promoter" of real estate in some less favored locality, who originally strove to fasten upon Saucelito the libelous name of " Windy Gulch ."

Suppose it is a little risky for navigation in that vicinity, what of it? A spanking breeze is just what all the amateur members of the two yacht club-houses located there are always wishing for, so they assure us; and as for the land-lubbers, if they can't take the trifling precaution to wear lead hatbands and have their wigs properly fastened on with copper rivets, it is their own fault.

A LITTLE FRESH AIR

Is what people go on picnics expressly to obtain, and if the air happens to be a little too fresh sometimes--up in Platt's can˜on, for instance--nothing is easier than to adjourn to the lee side of the nearest fence. There are always plenty of rocks lying around to act as paper-weights, to keep sandwiches and sponge cake from being blown away, while everybody knows that a good-sized stone anchored in the centre of the lemonade tub will readily prevent that indispensible adjunct from being wafted down-hill by a summer typhoon. It may seem strange that we have use for so much wind in writing about Saucelito; but, as it is the first thing that strikes a visitor on arriving, and the last when he leaves, it cannot very well be avoided.

Saucelito proper consists of a number of verdurous rolling hills, facing the sea on one side and the bay on the other, and liberally dotted with cottages and tomato cans. The latter are generously interspersed with pop bottles and peanut shells, the sure aftermath of the cheap and noisy species of picnic. In fact, were it not for what has been aptly called the "predatory picnic" of the period, Saucelito would have no particular reason for existing at all, and may safely be said to rely chiefly for support upon the perennial outpourings of the "Ancient Order of Boiler-Makers," the "United Buttonhole Workers," the "Auriferous Soap-boilers," and other social organizations of prominence.

Saucelito possesses two wharves, two stores, two alleged hotels and the butt-end of a railroad, which seeks to entice the unwary traveler still further into the hostile picnic country. We say "alleged" hotels, because there is no official record of any one ever having stopped at either, although the last boat to the city in the afternoon is always carefully started with a view of leaving as many belated passengers as possible subject to the doom of remaining all night in the place, or hiring a plunger to take them across at twenty dollars the trip--the latter alternative being generally selected. This reference to the hotels, however, does not include the famous.

RETY'S RESTAURANT,

Which is, after all, about all there is of the place and the chief 80 77 object of interest to visitors, if we except mine host, Slinkey's just re-started hotel, the El Monte, on the hill-top, which overlooks a superb view, and is quite a revelation in hotel-keeping to the saucy--well, the Saucelitans. At Rety's the Sunday-killing millionaire can enjoy a truly epicurean breakfast well served. We say millionaire advisedly, although we do not quite endorse the vulgar legend that the proprietress is a lineal descendent of Ali Baba, and still runs a sort of branch office of the robbers' cave. A well-known broker told the writer that upon one occasion he dined at the restaurant with a party of friends. When the bill was presented, he started with amazement at its size, and for some moments supposed a practical joke had been perpetrated upon him. He repaired to the office and demanded to know the reason for the excessive charge.

"Isn't your name John B. Blank?" asked the polite clerk, running his finger down the page of a large, thin book marked "Tax List."

"No; my name is John C.; John B. is the rich real-estate owner."

"Ah! yes; so I see," said the steak-stretcher. "I thought you were the other gentleman. As it is, we will throw off half. I see I've sized you up wrong."

But this story is so evidently a slander that we desire to disown it on the spot.

Saucelito is

DESERVEDLY POPULAR

With hard-worked business-men as a convenient place to send large families to rusticate. Not that it is an excptionally economical spot, but the peculiar flawy and vehement nature of the before-alluded-to zephyrs renders it a desirable locality in which to send one's mother-in-law out sailing. Theoretically this is the most resorted-to place on the whole bay for fishing. Not a boat leaves this side but carries half a dozen piscatorially arrayed passengers, bearing all manner of elaborate tackle, plethoric lunch-baskets and distinguished by the beaming smile peculiar to the eager fisherman as he sallies forth by "the bright light in the morning," and not a late boat hitherward 81 78 but contains similar parties, with their rods carefully stowed under the seats, and their faces exhibiting the gloomy and preoccupied frown of the fishless and the badly left.

Justice demands, however, that the claims of two objects of interest in the vicinity be recognized. We doubt if there is a genuine sportsman on all this little wind-swept promontory of Frisco, whose heart does not involuntarily warm at the mention of

"VICTOR'S"

Little quail and duck-shooter's rendezvous on the carriage-road between Saucelito and San Rafael, about three miles from the former place. Here, in the long fall nights, gather the crack shots from this side to take an early start through the famous Throckmorton ranch after quail, or to hurl No. 6 and devastation upon the canvasbacks that "trade" up and down Richardson's Bay, in front of the little tavern. Take it all in all, more hunters' lies to the drink have been told at Victor's than at any other one place in all the coast. Mine host is a character himself, and a mighty hunter, whose secret of extracting at will a deer from the hills back of his house, and directly within sight of San Francisco's hurrying throngs, is still a matter of profound admiration to his less expert customers. "Vic" is a sort of Franco-Spanish Californian of the early days, and still causes the circles around his roaring winter fires to gape with blood-stirring tales of the good old times--not so very far past, either, for that matter--the times when the grizzlies came down every night to do their marketing among the cattle that then covered these fog-nurtured hills. One yarn that he relates with unmixed enjoyment refers to a playful

LITTLE PRACTICAL JOKE

Played upon him by some of his vaquero companions. It seems this party had been lying in wait for a particularly destructive grizzly by moonlight. Finally the gentle snorting of their horses showed them that his ursine majesty was approaching. As the bear began to tear the sheep-carcass left in the open as a bait, he was suddenly surrounded on all sides, and after a few exciting moments, became the helpless, snarling center of a 82 79 dozen lariats, which made a veritable spread-eagle of the impotent giant. At this juncture the duty fell to Victor to dismount, slip up to the furious beast, and cut its throat, an easy task so long as the pommel-lashed lariats were kept taut. No sooner had Victor reached the animal in this instance, and drawn his knife, than the horsemen all slackened their holds, enabling the grizzly to pull itself together, make a lunge, and sequestrate the seat of what is known in public-school parlance as the "panties" of its adversary, before the latter could regain his horse, a feat which he accomplished by the

SKIN OFF HIS BACK,

So to speak. Victor states that his friends laughed so heartily at this subtle stroke of vaquerian humor, that they had much ado to conquer the bear at all. "But, then;" the narrator would add, with reminiscent admiration, "they were the jolliest, best-natured set of dogs I ever met in my life!" and he still heaves a regretful sigh over the good old days.

The other object well worth a visit any fine Sunday is the Point Bonita Lighthouse, that symmetrical white shaft the incoming sea-traveler greets as marking the north jamb of the Golden Gate. This is reached by a roundabout, extremely ill-repaired road of some nine miles through the Throckmorton estate, and the occasional picturesqueness of which but ill compensates for its multitudinous jolts. These, and the surly boorishess of those whose office it is to unlock the several gates on the way, render the driving part of the trip somewhat undesirable. But the kindly reception by the light-keepers, and the simply

REGAL VIEW

That stretches before the visitor's delighted eye from the light-house-cliff itself is more than compensation for all. As one stands on the breaker-quivering crag it seems as though the very heart of the vasty deep lies below, while behind the white-capped waves hurry inward like an army in retreat, and fringe the rock-planted base of the Fort, and the shining sands of Point Lobos with a creamy lace from Neptune's own loom. Startlingly near at hand the cocked-hat group of the Farralones rest 83 80 on the bosom of the long Pacific swell, inviting venturesome excursionists to come out and look at them at a dollar and a half a sea-sick.

The in-bound China, Japan and North Coast steamers pass under one's feet almost. So close do they hug the lighthouse-point that an orange can be thrown upon the the decks of the passing craft. Where oranges are not to be obtained, apples may do, or even new potatoes. The lighthouse assistants encourage visitors to purchase vegetables for the purpose, and much soid amusement can be obtained by making up pools in which the thrower who first knocks a captain off his bridge, or blacks the eye of an up-gazing purser,

TAKES THE POT.

Speaking of pursers, the time has long since arrived when Congress should take some action looking to the proper restriction, if not, in fact, the total abolition, of the steamship purser of the period. What traveler is not familiar with these smooth and ingenuous mashers of the mighty deep; those childlike and bland ornaments of the first cabin and the quarter deck; those monopolizers of all the good dishes at the table, to say nothing of every pretty girl on board? Under the tissuey guise of making it pleasant for the passengers, they devote themselves to the genial task of stowing the males in some dismal "dungeon aboard," and the females in staterooms conveniently situated for flirting facilities. How often has the exasperated young husband or lover of the period, after a prolonged search, discovered the fair object of his solicitude stowed away under the lee of some longboat on the hurricane deck, eagerly absorbing the maritime taffy on a stick dealt out by one of these Lotharios of the briny deep. Unquestionably the hour for the permanent repression of these fiends has arrived, unless ocean travel is to become a custom of the past in this hemisphere. Perhaps a bill compelling these hard-worked tars to do their "pursing," whatever that means, in the daytime instead of the

DOG WATCHES OF THE NIGHT,

As must now be the case, would about cover the emergency.

While enrapt with the superb sea scenery during a recent visit to the Bonita light, the writer beheld, seated on an 84 81 overhanging ledge, near at hand, the figure of a middle-aged, corpulent citizen, who was weeping bitterly into a large, red-silk handkerchief, and anon casting sinister glances at the surging flood below. Taking our stand on one of this bereaved party's outspread coat-tails, in order to prevent the execution of any suicidal intent, we interrogated him as to his grief.

"Do you know Jim Skinderson?" inquired the weeper, stifling his sobs.

"Think not."

"Well, you don't want to. He's just about the meanest pup that ever walked on legs. See that steamer way off there, don't you?"

"Of course; what about it?"

"Well, my wife is on that boat, eloping to Australia with that infernal Skinderson. I thought it was dern strange this morning when Maria insisted on my taking an early start, and coming way over here on the early boat to have a little picnic all by myself, and enjoy the view. I say I thought it a little strange; but I didn't drop on the scheme until just now the steamer passed underneath with Skinderson hugging Maria on the top deck, and both of `em akissin' their hands to me. How's that for gall?"

"Well, that's pretty rough, for a fact."

"Rough?" moaned the sea-grass widower. "I call that rubbing it in--I do. I'm in doubt whether to jump overboard or go home and marry the chambermaid."

And placing a bowlder on his coat-tail to guard against accidents, we lent him a fresh kerchief and left him alone

IN HIS SORROW.

But to return to Saucelito--although we do not wish to infer that any one would return to that place of their own free and voluntary motion. We do so in this case, however, for the benevolent purpose of giving its inhabitants the only thing they don't reach for--a little kindly advice. This advice may be summarized in the single word which embodied Punch's famous advice to those about to get married--"Don't!" Don't charge visitors two dollars and a half for half an hour's crab-catching in an old rickety, two-to-one-you-don't-get-back row-boat. 85 82 Don't ask six and eight dollars for swallowing the dust of unsprinkled roads behind a rattletrap team in a fourteenth-century turnout. Don't sell last week's fish-bait at four bits a box. Don't take the coat from a stranger's back and the shoes off his feet to pay for a three-for-two lunch. Don't lie like a weather report about every conceivable thing under the canopy of heaven. Don't try to work off on the unsuspecting customers corner lots on the side of a hill so steep that the garden has to be cultivated from a step-ladder, and, finally, when you feel like getting mad over these really disinterested and kindly suggestions, instead of reforming their cause--why

DON'T!

San Rafael lies in the very heart of the hostile picnic country referred to in our letter on Saucelito, and is a curious instance of the futility of establishing an admitted summer resort in close proximity to a great city. Somehow, the average American citizen insists on being put to more or less trouble and expense to attain his relaxations, and the Garden of Eden itself, if situated directly on the other side of the bay, would be loftily ignored, and the preference given to its antipodes, if the latter were only to be reached by a long days' dusty car or stage-ride. Admitting the principle that in pleasure resorts distance lends more enchantment to the view than all other accessories, San Rafael has managed to paddle its own canoe as a hot weather retreat to a commendable extent. In fact, the town runs on its temperature. Every hotel or real-estate prospectus one picks up concerning the place demands us, implores us, pleads with us to take particular note of the San Rafael temperature, and to state what we think of it. One is metaphorically requested to lay one's hand on one's heart and depose whether this vicinity has not the boss temperature for evenness of any spot on the inhabitable globe. What the yearly mean temperature of the place is it is probable no one person has lived long enough in San Rafael to discover, but in the summer time it is about the meanest temperature yet invented--for a fat man. But as genuine, uncompromising heat at a watering-place on this coast, and especially a

WHISKY-AND-WATER-

Ing place, is not undesirable, the landlords of the many boarding-houses that fill San R.'s brief streets ought to be satisfied. Unlike the Eastern custom, San Franciscans leave their homes at this season to escape the cold of summer, and, therefore, the sun-visited, zephyr-shunned hollow in the hills in which this picturesque hamlet is situated is just the place to start the wholesome perspiration checked by our sweeping "trades." That a tenderloin steak can be broiled in twenty minutes on the house-top of a San R. residence is an eminently unkind tradition in which we take no stock, but that other oft-stated scientific fact that setting hens in that locality daren't leave their eggs uncovered for five minutes at a time, for fear of finding their embryo offspring hard-cooked, is attested by the best authority. In fact, we believe that some special provision is made by the Town Council for boarding hens up country during the trying period in question.

The Tamalpais Hotel, kept by the bland and accommodating Graham, is the immediate objective point of travelers on arriving. This is not altogether due to the pleasing contingent of well-favored young ladies, with cardinal silk stockings and low-cut shoes, that assemble on the piazza when the train gets in, but equally to the merits of the very superior bar at this caravansary, and the number of mint juleps and

"LONG NAPAS,"

With sticks in them, that an ordinary Sunday morning trainfull can dispose of, would require a lightning calculator to estimate.

As might be expected, San Rafael boasts, among its permanent residents, several citizens of metropolitan fame. With awe-struck mien, the simple rustic points the visitor to the vine-embowered Eastlake, where Editor Pixley forges his California-street-delivered thunderbolts, and awakens the sheetiron thunders of the Argonaut with his ponderous quill. In the Nob-Hill quarter of the bailiwick, the genial, unaffected and universally-popular William T. Coleman resides in a house fairly redolent with the odors of roses and hospitality, and 88 85 where its owner presents a perennial illustration of how delightful is wealth and position unaccompanied by the "big head," that fatal California disease.

"WHITECLUB COLEMAN"

Is the familiar nom de guerre still given him by that omnipresent army of young-men-about-town designated by the comprehensive title of "the boys." This is in memory, not of the historical 'Vigilante days of `49," in which Mr. C. bore so emphatic a part, but the more recent times of the would-be Kearney riots, when the "Citizens' Committee" called forth the kid-glove brigade to protect their altars and put out their fires. It is as good as a play to hear some twilight sauntering Romeo from the hotel suddenly enthuse at the sight of the house of his leader in the battle of Rincon Hill, and proceed to appall the Juliet in the case with a recital of the dangers by field and flood of that memorable night. The writer was one of the baseball-bal-armed warriors of that huge lark, and it is a question whether the alleged sanguinary hoodlum enjoyed it more than we. Our company, we remember, was B, of the cavalry wing of the carpet veterans, who met to drill at Horticultural Hall, and the writer was the forty-third Lieutenant. We were perched on an imposing array of Arab chargers, hastily taken from the stables of a street-car company. When our eighty odd steeds were mounted and ranged along the curbstone they presented a very formidable appearance indeed, but the difficulty was to get them in motion. Ordinary equine inducements to locomotion were powerless to

ATTRACT THE ATTENTION

Of our rail-accustomed steeds. In this dilemma, a sudden inspiration came to our captain--Crittenden Robinson, we think. He dismounted, and rushed around the corner to a hardware store. In a few moments he returned with a call-bell, which he tied to his pommel. A single "Jang!" on this set the whole troupe in motion, with military unanimity, and with the aid of this familiar adjunct the car-horses were maneuvered with surprising ease thereafter. It is true our trusty animals showed an evident disposition to pull up whenever they saw a fat 89 86 woman with a market basket on the corner; but, on the whole, we did very well. For reasons which it would be unstrategic and unnecessary to disclose here, we gave particular attention to those sinister haunts of Kearneyism, the beer saloons. The anxious and thorough manner in which we examined these ambushes to detect concealed foes, especially in the vicinity of their cellars, was very remarkable. On one occasion, near midnight, we halted in fron of a saloon at North Beach, in which the lights were extinguished and the front entrance closed. This was

A SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCE,

And after a council of war it was resolved to effect an entrance from the rear, in order to outflank any Tar-Flat bushwhackers that might be lurking within. A platoon of us accordingly dismounted and carried the works by storm from a rear alley. The rest of the command awaited in martial expectancy for the result. An hour passed by, during which the thirsty warriors outside were mystified by faint sounds of revelry that came from within. Finally the forlorn hope within opened the door and staggered into the street, full of hilarity and beer. The disgusted cavalrymen on picket knew by intuition that the last drop of beer had been exhausted, and, pretending to mistake our outpouring for a rush of the rioters, fell to and clubbed us within an inch of our lives.

Some of "the boys" still bear the scars obtained in those wild midnight rides on the hard trotters af the Sutter-street line. These wounds are chiefly located about two-and-a-half feet below their after collar-buttons.

The chief show-place of San Rafael, however, is the property of Seth Cook, of Alta memory; and it is interesting to behold the gaze of gloomy retrospection with which the great army of sufferers by those two

FATAL DEALS

Of the "Cook boys" regard the statue-crowned, flower-girt terraces that lead up to the palatial residence of that "childlike and bland" operator. We do not know the name given to this verdurous hillside by its owner, but "Mount Alta" is 90 87 the pregnant title by which it is designated amid the great army of the "dead broke."

Any one who possesses the soul of an artist, combined with that of a fisherman, can have both filled to the brim with happines by the following simple recipe: First, let him obtain a permit from the Secretary of the San Rafael waterworks to fish a day in its reservoir at Lagunitas, halfway up the side of Mount Tamalpais and some eight miles' drive from the town. This, by the way, requires about the same exertion and influence required to obtain a foreign appointment. Then, provided with proper tackle and plenty of bait, for both man and fish (for the latter a pound of fresh shrimps will be found just the thing), start in the early morning and feast your eyes upon the rarest succession of beautiful forestscapes to be had on the whole middle coast line. As the smooth road climbs and curves up the mountain side, a panoramic procession of mossy nooks and shade-haunted valleys appears to the esthetic eye. When at last the Lagunitas is reached, a scene of what might tritely be called sylvan beauty astonishes the city-worn eye of the beholder. On three sides still tower the upper altitudes of the mountain. In front lies the lake, ovalshaped, cool, placid, and its banks fringed with every verdurous hue of the wildwood. At the broader end the crystal, clear water is 40 feet deep, and at all times myriads of trout can be seen actually rising to the surface to get

THE FIRST SNAP

At the angler's hook. The hand that writes this jerked just eighty-seven noble felows out of the water one spring day three years ago, one of them measuring twenty-three inches, and generally resembling a good-sized shad in thickness. To this last specimen hangs a fish-tale, in this wise. The greedy old patriarch of the finny hordes first attached itself to the line of another of the party, a well-known Pacific Coast Senator, whose physical attributes are in inverse ratio to his monetary ones. After an exhausting struggle to land the trout, the boom-log upon which our political plutocrat was standing revolved, and he disappeared into the lake with a wild yell, and evidently in mortal terror lest the trout should mistake him also for a shrimp 91 88 and summarily engulf him. We forthwith sacrificed a new flannel suit upon the altar of humanity, and fished old Crœsus out--not an easy thing to do, as the line had become wrapped around the senatorial foot, and the trout was desperately heading for the depths of the lake, like a piscatorial steam tug. It proved a bad investment of philanthropy, however, as not only did the suit aforesaid half-mast itself on our arms and legs in the process of drying, but the rescued party, with that shamefaced resentment of an obligation peculiar to small minds, carefully avoided us thereafter--another indorsement of that veracious and meaty Spanish proverb, "Do a man a favor, and

HE WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU."

To any one accustomed to the tawny, monotonous, paddle-smoothed hills that appear to comprise our entire bay scenery, the bold, even grand, forest views he obtains on the short run by rail from San Rafael to Saucelito are simply astonishing. To the surprised gazer upon the imposingly picturesque sweep of oak-crowned heights that mark the landward front of the Coast Range hills, between those two points, it seems as though he had descended into an unknown land, hundreds of miles away from Frisco's monotonous bustle. It is true that one's appreciation of nature's charms is apt to be mitigated by an entire Teutonic family returning from a picnic, standing upon each foot in the over-crowded cars. But now that corn-doctors have made a general reduction in prices, that is not so much a matter of importance as formerly. An alleged wine-garden, stationed in the most extremely torrid quarter of San Rafael, is one of the best-known attractions of the place, though the proprietor always seems too profoundly surprised at the advent of customers to wait upon them. All the same, it is a great place for Sunday visitors to repair and wile away an hour or so hammering on the arbor tables for waiters who never appear. After this wholesome exercise, they off and drink beer at some less pretentious place.

One of the chief productions of San Rafael appears to be setter dogs. We do not mean the reproduction of this interesting animal altogether, but the keeping and general "promotion" of the species. A large proportion of the valuable 92 89 city-owned hunting-dogs are boarded here during the "close" season, and it is a very frigid day when a couple of hundred of them cannot be seen holding a sort of

CANINE CONVENTION

In some vacant lot. One can be bitten by a $200 Laverack in San Rafael for nothing any day, and hydrophobia is within the reach of the poorest family.

There are three unusually enjoyable drives in the vicinity of the town. One is a well-watered way that leads through the beautiful Coleman tract, and which is dotted with cottage ornees every few hundred yards. The second, and most charming, winds through some private woodlands towards Mount Tamalpais, and up an eminence south of the village, from which a truly attractive view can be seen. The third was evidently laid out under the combined directions of the undertakers and carriage-makers of the place. For over a mile, it lies along the railroad-track, and is so arranged that it is impossible for frightened horses to avoid facing the on-coming engines, or escape from their rush and noise, except by smashing the vehicle and breaking its occupants' necks as near as may be. That the yearly average of accidents along this man-and-horse-trap is enormous, nobody denies, save the local Coroner; but as that official wore a $2,000 solitaire in his shirt-front, his testimony ought to be taken with a whole bag of salt.

Many vineyards have been started in this vicinity, but, after all, the land over against San Rafael, and the country round about, is destined to be the chosen stamping-ground of the

FESTIVE PICKNICKERS

For many a generation to come. The San Rafael citizen affects to consider the pleasure-seeking visitors from the city a perennial nuisance, which they undoubtedly are, but what the town would do bereft of its peanut and ginger-beer trade, it would be hard to say. Attached to one of the many picnic "groves" is a local celebrity of unique accomplishments. He is called the "San Rafael Octopus," and is so designated on account of the facility with which he hugs eight girls at a time, and renders himself generally useful to visiting organizations. A young man gifted like that ought to make a proud record for 93 90 himself at an Oakland church sociable. Why the picnic ground of the period should not be considered complete without an attenuated, disreputable and anything but inodorous bear chained to a post in its midst, as well as a melancholy eagle moping in a chicken-coop, it would be hard to tell. In addition to these forlorn captives, we saw at one place a huge vulture, or California condor, tied to a stake. The proprietor kindly offered to illustrate this bird's proverbial voracity by feeding it with fish. After eagerly devouring its weight in tomcods three times over, it paused to gasp for breath with the tail of the last fish sticking out of its stuffed and swollen neck.

"What do you suppose we call him?" asked the proprietor, as we gazed in momentary expectation of seeing the feathered hog burst open.

"Don't know," we replied, after a few moments consideration.

"But, just guess," insisted the landlord. "Should think anybody could tell that."

"Central Pacific?" we hazarded.

"Oh, no! worse than that. Just look here," and he held up to the paralyzed creature's mouth another huge fish, half of which it managed to gulph in, though its red eyes stood out like pegs on a cribbage-board to make room.

"Give it up," we said finally. "What on earth is its name?"

"Why, General Grant!" said the man, impatiently. "Do you tumble now?"

And behold, a great light broke in upon us, gentle reader, and we tumbled.

While the perpetrator of this veracious column has been engaged in pluming his more or less goose-quill for a flight in the direction of the Yosemite, he has received numerous letters, not only from hotel landlords, but many readers as well, requesting that he "write up" (or down, as the case may be) a large variety of other pleasure resorts before shutting down his works, so to speak, for the season. Even those not pecuniarily interested in the subjects suggested, display a desire to have their favorite summer rendezvous depicted from a purely Dodderian standpoint. While thanking our complimentary correspondents for the interest displayed in these careful historical reminiscences of ours, we must at the same time suggest the obvious difficulty of our complying with their requests in all cases. Of the baker's dozen of localities thus referred to our kindly attention, the majority have as yet been unvisited by us. Of the remainder, several have been "taken in" but casually in the course of travel, and of them we can at best but record what Oscar Wilde would call an "Impression," and which would doubtless fail to do justice to the merits of each. For illustration, we have several times been requested to print our idea of

SAN JOSE

As a place of attraction for visitors. We have seen a good deal of San Jose altogether, and yet it holds its chief claim to a 95 92 place in our estimation from its contiguity to Alum Rock--a place every newcomer is impressively urged to visit the moment he sets foot in the town. The visitor accordingly procures a five-dollar team, drives out to the important locality referred to, on a road that is remarkable for smoothness and dust. When he gets to the rock, he invests two bits in a gingerpop without ice, inspects a raccoon in a chicken-coop, and a garter-snake in a soap-box, and drives home again possessed with an unshakable impression that he has been the victim of a particularly emphatic practical joke. This accomplished, the visitor has left but two other sensations to beguile his sojourn. One of these is to breed a chronic "crick" in the neck by staring up at the daddy-long-legs king of an edifice supporting the electric light, and hearing the inhabitants lie about its performances, and the other is taking a drive to Mount Hamilton, some thirty odd miles away, and somewhere upon whose

MIST-WRAPPED ALTITUDES

The Rip Van Winkles of the Lick Trustees are putting in the first six of their twenty years' slumber.

Of course, we understand that the particular attraction upon which the S.J. townspeople pride themselves is the Alameda. This is an undeniably handsome and well-kept drive, connecting the town with Santa Clara, and shaded with superb trees in a very effective and refreshing manner, indeed. But a serious drawback to a stranger's enjoyment of this drive, however, arises from a unique San Josean custom.

Every carriage--and particularly every buggy--one meets on the Alameda after four P.M., is occupied by couples as intently engaged in the doubtless enjoyable, but reprehensible, custom of hugging, and that with a calm and serene disregard of surroundings astounding to contemplate, especially by a citizen of pious San Francisco, where, thank heaven, such "goings on" are never heard of.

The cold fact is, that hugging has long been a recognized San Jose industry, but still the effect produced upon a harmless and unsophisticated stranger by these Greco-Roman

WRESTLING MATCHES ON WHEELS

Is very peculiar indeed. We remember a young and innocent stockbroker friend from New York, who essayed a drive on the Alameda for the first time about a month ago. The first one or two moving tableaux of the kind referred to that he encountered he simply stared and ejaculated," Great Scott !!" But as mile after mile the amatory procession kept up the exhibition, he became nervous and excited. After a while he began to talk incoherently and cheer in a vague and peculiar manner. When finally he passed a buckboard wagon, the driver of which was holding the reins in his teeth and hugging a girl on either side of him, while a third sat in his lap, our friend broke down completely and insisted on embracing the hack-driver all the way back to the hotel. He is now in the Napa Asylum, where he passes his time coiled around a tree on the grounds, under the impression that he is a boa constrictor, or some other apparatus of a contractile nature.

Before we leave the subject, however, we desire to do the fair San Joseans a real favor by indignantly refuting, in their behalf, some of the exaggerated stories relative to their flirting predilections that have found such general circulation of late. No one pretends to deny that the S.J. girls are just a little fly--or, perhaps it would be more gallant to say

A LITTLE BUTTERFLY,

As it were--but still the story that the young men in that rural metropolis are forced to walk home evenings in the middle of the street, for fear of being lassoed and yanked in at the second story windows, is all guff--there is really nothing in it.

A glance at the next letter in order, amid the invitations before mentioned, shows that "McGluckey's Landing" is the next rural elysium to which our journalistic attention is called. Our office-map of the interior is somewhat threadbare, in consequence of the energy with which it has been perused by the political editor in searching for the localites yielding the large Democratic majorities claimed by the Examiner last election, yet still it is probable the situation of "McGluckey's Landing" would hardly have escaped our eagle eye unless it has been left 97 94 off the map altogether--a result of the combined envy of other watering-place proprietors. Perhaps, after all, our correspondent's attractive resort exists as yet only in his mind's eye. Possibly it is so far merely a prospective scheme for the introduction of dyspepsia into the first circles of which Mr. McGlucky writes, and as a starter for which, he is even now boring around a cow-county ranch for a spring that tastes of political eggs, old shoe-soles, and

A CHEMIST'S CERTIFICATE.

We remember a man in the East who lived near the White Mountains, and who accumulated quite a fortune by starting watering-places. Wherever he would find a small, over-worked farm that wouldn't produce over six onions to the acre, he would buy it, run up a frame building of three hundred rooms at an average cost of four dollars a room, bore an artesian well, call the outfit "Vallambrosa Grove," or something romantic like that, sell out, and move on. This man managed in this way to perpetrate over twenty alleged "resorts" upon the Eastern public, and would be at his nefarious business to this day if they hadn't got to publishing the list of arrivals at his hotels in the Police Gazette , under the head of

"MORE ROBBERIES!"

We don't, of course, mean to infer that the resort in question is of the above description, but until we can definitely locate Mr. McGluckey's Landing, which just now appears to be lost or mislaid, and of no value to any one except the owner, we must refrain from doing adequate justice to its attractions. We have already started out two men and a boy with a lantern in search, and are prepared to get out an extra as soon as any trace of Mr. G's property can be discovered.

Santa Rosa is a mellifluously-named town of which we wish we knew more as a midsummer retreat. At all events, the olfactories of its residents have nothing to complain of, if the great masses of roses that everywhere make its summer days odorous are a sample of its allurements. In this respect the place possesses a very tangible charm that no one can fail to value. We can speak more by the card as to its advantages 98 95 as a winter resort for the hunter. Nowhere are quail more plentiful than at Santa Rosa, in the hills over against, and in the country round about, as the revised edition would have it. In fact, it would be the foremost

HAPPY HUNTING-GROUND

Of the city sportsman were it not for the peculiarly mean conduct of a crabbed old land-owner, who owns a ranch just outside the town. This dog in the manger not only doesn't hunt himself, but attempts to prevent that first of all of poor humanity's pleasures to others. Not content with posting his own land, he keeps a large, savage mastiff for the express purpose of attacking and disabling all strange hunting-dogs--which are generally not fighters--that pass the road in front of its master's house. This canine bully, however, carefully avoids dogs of his own calibre. An enthusiastic sporting friend of the writer was on two occasions forced to return to town emptyhanded on account of the severe mangling by the said brute--we refer just now to the mastiff, not his owner--of his favorite bird-dog; a valuable white setter. After brooding a long time upon his wrongs, our friend conceived a dark scheme of revenge. He borrowed from Phil McGovern his big white sixtypound bull-dog, the champion of the

CANINE PRIZE RING.

This renowned chewer of his kind he carefully painted with mucilage on the back of the legs, the under length of the tail, around the ears, etc. To these places he stuck shedded cottonbatting in such a way that the dog closely resembled a rather thick-set setter or retriever. Then our quail-hunter went up to Santa Rosa on the evening train, and walked down the road, followed by the big bull-dog, who trotted sedately along, evidently under the impression that he was going to a masquerade. Pretty soon the hunter saw the crabbed old rancher leaning on his front-gate, with a sardonic smile, while his prototype, the mastiff, was looking out of a crack in the fence and licking his chops with an expression that said as plainly as possible:

"Well, I'm dog-goned if here ain't that white setter again. If I don't finish him this time, I'm a Skye terrier!"

The next moment the dogs were enveloped in a cloud of dust in the middle of the road. The cross rancher rubbed his hands and chuckled, until the bull calmly appeared with a section of the deceased mastiff's vertebra in his teeth. Then--and only then--

THE OLD MAN TUMBLED.

And now that we have started, perhaps it is as well to follow up the same line of railroad until we reach Healdsburg, another sequestered haunt, where families retire during the summer months, lured by the assurance of "all the comforts of a home including fresh milk within ten minutes' walk of the depot." And right here let us relieve our long-perturbed mind by asking why it is that people still talk of drinking milk, as though that fluid were something palatable and nutritious, instead of being really the most deadly, unwholesome article of diet that a sane adult could attempt to assimilate? Because the robust, ostrich-like stomachs of infants can digest milk, there is no reason why the lives of adults should be risked by indulgence in this most insidiously unwholesome beverage. We poke fun at the milkman for diluting his wares, little dreaming that he is doing the very thing that prevents his fatal compound from being even more destructive than it is. Ask any competent physician what article of food is more responsible for biliousness, headaches, cramps--in fact, the majority of ills that flesh is heir to--and he will answer " milk ." It was a glass of cold milk that slew the loveliest, and in a large sense the ablest, actress of our time--the forever-to-be-mourned

ADELAIDE NEILSON.

We speak with all seriousness when we say that Congress ought to pass a law making it a penal offense to sell milk, except on a physician's prescription, and then only when the patient is certified as being under six years of age.

Leaving Healdsburg in the Milky Way for the present, we pass on to Cloverdale, which certainly is entitled to the belt as possessing about the worst hotel in the entire business. This 100 97 is kept by a Dutchman, whose peculiar order of intelligence favors the suspicion that he was originally intended for the sign of a German cigar-store. From this Teutonic tavern the stages start for Calistoga, and the traveler's thankfulness of heart when they do start is something refreshing to feel. The road to the latter place is as beautiful and romantic as one could well wish. The greater part of the distance the passenger looks down from the dizzy height of the mountain-curving road upon a majestic can˜on, over the rocky bottom of which a rushing torrent flings its feathery froth into the air.

The halfway house on this road is called

THE GEYSERS,

And the traveler who stops to lunch is surprised to sometimes find a considerable number of permanent guests from San Francisco. We say surprised, for any place more apparently unsuited for a prolonged stay for those in search of either pleasure or fresh air could hardly be conceived. The hotel is situated in a sweltering, breeze-shunned can˜on in the mountain, the rocky face of the opposite side reflecting the heat with additional strength. Through various apertures in the rocks small jets of steam escape, every vaporing rathole being labeled with a name of its own. There is only one road, and, so far as we could learn, there was no other amusement practicable here than sitting on the porch waiting for meal-times, unless it were bathing in a pond dug in the bed of the creek flowing through the decidedly torrid and gloomy-looking can˜on in question. The proprietor of this resort appears, from all accounts, to be a rather unique specimen of the landlord species, and was somewhat generally alluded to as a Boniface of truly Oriental, not to say Turkish, recommendations. The boarders are chiefly the wives and families of metropolitan merchants, and it is said that this steak-stretching edition of

ARABI PASHA

Has a faculty for keeping his gentle guests in a state of wholesome subjection, interesting to contemplate, an advantage that appears to be all too little appreciated by gentlemen with unmanageable spouses. In addition to the main building there 101 98 are various small cottages about the grounds, chiefly tenanted by male guests of a hospitable description, and it is but just to say that much appears to be done to cause those ladies, whose natural protectors visit them only on Sundays, to endure their midweek loneliness in this Plutonic, if not Platonic, locality with resignation.

The road from this point to Calistoga increases in interest with every turn of the stage-wheel, and becomes wilder and more romantic at each swing around the cliff's edge of Foss' six-mustang team. The driving of this celebrity of the ribbons is something of itself really worth the trip to see. It must be borne in mind that there are two Fosses, father and son, the latter being far and away the more expert and reliable. It is a sensation worth experiencing to sit beside this

JEHU OF THE "HIGH GRADES,"

As these upper mountain roads are called, and listen to him call and talk to each of his steeds in turn as they rush at a full canter around cliff-quarried bends so sharp that the "swedge" of the hind wheels throws a shower of pebbles over the brink of the sheer-down chasm below. "Now, then, Brandy!" "Look out there, Soda!" "None of that, Jingle?" he cries, eaoh horse cocking back a responsive ear at his name, and instantly obeying his master; he causing them to walk, trot or gallop at the word and without using the reins or whip at all.

We remember once going over this road on the hottest day we ever experienced on the coast. There were something like twenty passengers in the coach, sweltering six on a seat, our own sufferings being augmented through having volunteered to hold in our lap a large and particularly cross poodle belonging to a pretty young lady passenger. The manner in which that unspeakably vile animal dug his claws into our legs, bit us every time the stage jolted extra hard, and generally made our existence a black and hollow mockery, we can never, never forget. At last the young lady referred to fainted from the excessive heat, as well she might. When she came to, she learned that the poodle had got lost while chasing a rabbit. She will never know, until these lines meet her gaze, that

HER BELOVED "NELLO"

Was gently but firmly tossed over the cliff by the unanimous vote of the passengers. It may, perhaps, serve to expedite her forgiveness for the outrage when the writer states that it took him two weeks to pick the dog-hairs out of his pants with a pair of tweezers.

But this is a digression. We were going to say that on this particular trip we passengers were exceedingly annoyed by the persistence with which young Foss demanded that the stage-doors be kept closed, particularly when their being opened caused an appreciable circulation of air. Just as we were rounding a particularly narrow turn in the face of the cliff, Foss noticed that the inside door, so to speak, was again being held ajar. Promptly putting on the brakes and bringing his horses to a halt, he descended.

"Do you see that rock?" he said, pointing to a huge bowlder ahead that barely left room for the stage to pass.

"What of it?"

"Only this. Last season a stage was passing that rock when somebody opened the door. The door caught on the rock, and as it opened further just pried the whole business over the cliff. That little speck way down there is

ONE OF THE HIND WHEELS

Caught on a tree. Now will you keep that door shut?"

It took half an hour to get that door opened when we got to Calistoga, every individual on board having separately tied it shut with his handkerchief, except the good-looking young lady referred to, who used a string. Where she got the string is a mystery, but as her bustle dropped off as she alighted it is fair to sup--but no matter about that now.

All the same, Calistoga is not a bad place for the idler of the dog days to dispense his loose change at. And, speaking of change, the peculiar faculty possessed by pocket-money for voluntarily dissipating itself is nowhere so remarkable as at watering places. One stops at a resort where there is apparently no possible opportunity of expending a nickel in incidental expenses--some place where there may be not even a 103 100 bar-room or barber within reach. At the end of his stay the guest is astonished to find that his pocket-money has decreased with the same

PER DIEM PUNCTUALITY

That it displayed in the metropolis. In fact, the well-known scientist, Professor Gluckerson, of the Academy of Sciences, recently made a very interesting experiment regarding this inherent property of pocket money. In the presence of four other gentlemen of philosophic tendencies, he placed a twenty-dollar gold-piece in a small buckskin purse, the opening of which was carefully sewed up. This was placed in turn in four different envelopes, all of them being separately sealed by the umpires. The package was then placed in a pair of pants specially constructed with a sheet-iron pocket, the latter being afterwards carefully closed with copper rivets. These pants were then worn by the Professor just one calendar hotel-week of six days and a breakfast at the Gilroy Hot Springs. At the expiration of this period the pocket was unriveted, and the package opened in the presence of the entire party. All that was left of the twenty was a five-cent nickel

WITH A HOLE IN IT.

And not only was this the case, but the purse was found to contain sixteen tags for money borrowed of the barkeeper, and five beans, showing a further indebtedness of half a dollar for ten-cent ante.

This scientific establishment of the long-respected power of the Almighty Peso for spending itself will doubtless be of the greatest benefit to married ladies now bracing up for their annual fall raid upon the family check-book, even though it causes the objects of said raids to feel more than ever like the henpecked clergyman who once absent-mindedly announced that "The prayers of the congregation are desired for a man about to be struck for a new spring bonnet."

As everybody is supposed to know, there are two ways of getting into "the Valley." One is by rail to Merced and then by stage through Mariposa Big Trees, and the other by rail to Madera and by stage via Fresno Flats. By the latter route the passenger arrives at Madera about midnight, but is allowed peaceful possession of his sleeping-berth until the next morning. He is then fortified by a good night's rest and a fair breakfast for his encounter with the in some respects easier of the two stage-roads, a trip over either being as severe an ordeal in this roasting weather as the most inveterate traveler could well look for this side of purgatory. Earlier in the season it is different. The road or "grade" from Madera of itself is not specially disagreeable, save for the dust--in fact, is surprisingly good, considering the natural obstacles to be overcome in its construction. But its chief and only serious drawback, in the estimation of the ordinary traveler, is the painfully long trip essayed for the first day's journey, the seventy odd miles from Madera to Clark's Station being, the nature of the ground and the temperature taken into consideration, entirely too much for a continuous ride, especially for ladies. The trip should have another break or rest in it, and sooner or later the problem will be solved either by the establishment of a thoroughly good halfway house, on the line, or else the extension of the railroad as far as Fresno Flats. Why steps to accomplish this latter proposition have not already been taken by the railroad company is one of those things not very clear to the finite mind. The Yosemite 105 102 is already one of the permanent wonders of the world. There is no possible chance of any competition lessening its attractions. Every year the influx of visitors nearly doubles, and, therefore, the railroad company has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by occupying the ground early. An extension of the C. P. branch to

FRESNO FLATS

Would be all that would be required, and, all things considered, be even preferable to an all-rail route to the valley. This would leave a truly romantic and enjoyable ride of only some twenty odd miles to Clarke's, over a road that the owners could then afford to keep in even more perfect repair, and sprinkle every day during the season. This added facility would reduce the obstacles to the traveler's perfect enjoyment of the trip to two--those two, we need scarcely say, being the sleeping-car porters and the canned vegetables of the wayside inns. The porters are, if anything, even worse than the vegetables; and if there is any justice left on this peculiar planet of ours, the passenger who shot one of these saddle-tinted despots of the rail on a southern road not long ago ought to be awarded the current Congressional yearly medal for heroism. That even one long-suffering tourist has had the courage to resent the unfaltering incivility--the, so to speak, professional impudence--of these enemies to mankind, goes a long way to renew one's faith in the dignity of human nature. They tell a story of old Commodore Vanderbilt, to the effect that even when he was, comparatively speaking, owner of the entire railroad system of his State, he made a point of always passing to and from Saratoga on the Hudson River boats, although the trains made the distance in half the time. On being questioned as to his reason for this, he answered:

"Yes, I know it's a fearful waste of time; but then, you see, the sleeping-car porters on the Central snub a fellow so dreadfully."

Joe Jefferson once told the writer that whenever he felt his hold on the public beginning to wane, he intended killing a Pullman car-attendant as an advertisement. The next evening we hired twenty hoodlums to go to the theatre and hiss 106 103 Rip Van Winkle all the way through; but the rascals got interested in the play, somehow, and the scheme failed.

As for the canned vegetables, even the vernacular of Pacific slope journalism fails to do justice to the subject. The doctors can say what they please, but the unusual percentage of insanity on this coast is due chiefly to these tin-enveloped torturers of the human stomach. One arrives jolted, back-sore and famished at the California stage-house of the period to encounter bullet-proof chops, sections of Monitor-built chickens, aggravated and abetted by watery tomatoes tasting like

A WHOLE TIN MINE,

And peas of which the farseeing sportsman always pockets his portion for use in case his supply of buckshot gives out. And speaking of despots, the waiters one meets in remote country feeding-houses (not hotels, mind you) are of the true Russian breed, for whose benefit there will one day be a corner in glass bombs; mark our words. These autocrats of the breakfast-table rely serenely upon their distance from the servant-supplying centers, and the resultant utter helplessness of their employers. Consequently they indulge their likes and dislikes at their own sweet will. At one stopping-place, not a thousand miles from Fresno, one of these worthies, who was a Celt of the Land League variety, took a dislike to an Englishman of our party, and, in spite of the earnest protestations of the proprietor, insisted on adding a tablespoonful of arsenic to the Briton's coffee. The landlord did not dare to warn the doomed man for fear of being instantly discharged by his employee, and the rest of the passengers kept mum for fear of sharing the same fate. The upshot was, that we left the unfortunate globetrotter tied up into a double bowknot on the veranda, and attributing his terrible internal sensations to the canned corn--a very natural mistake. At another house of alleged refreshment, the waiter distributed hot cakes in the following unique manner: First, he dealt each player a clean plate, then, taking his stand at the head of the table with a huge pile of cakes in one hand, he quoited them with the other hand down the entire line of platters, winding up the performance by shying the last and hottest cake on to the skull of a baldheaded man, as a 107 104 little gratuitous stroke of humor. We did not actually see this operation, but as the man who told us wore a white choker, kept hugging the lady passengers, and gave other evidences of being a clergyman, we feel justified in printing it as the gospel fact.

The first half of the stage journey from Madera is over a wide stretch of rock-strewn, barren flats, containing no feature of interest ot the dust-choked passenger, save the famous Fresno Flume, that stretches its interminable length along the roadside the entire distance, and torments the heated traveler with the cool gurgle overhead of water that he hears but never sees. The latter portion of the route is through imposing forests of

GIGANTIC SUGAR PINES,

Whose generous shade refreshes the heat-worn wayfarer like "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land," referred to in the unrevised edition. At the last change-station before reaching Clarke's we were pointed to a spot where an eight-hundred-pound black bear had been killed the previous morning, a statement that enthused a tiger-hunting Englishman on the back seat to the extent that it required the united exertions of his valet and the driver to prevent his getting out his rifle and camping over night in the woods. The average English sportsman on his travels is a ready means of diversion, for which native travelers cannot be too grateful. The plaintive appeals of the one in question for the driver to apprise him the moment any grizzlies came in sight became more frequent as the distance decreased, and the outraged expression of his face, when at last he realized that he had carried a cocked Winchester for seventy miles without even seeing a California lion, was heartrending to behold. While it is the perhaps not too well bred custom for Americans to more or less guy traveling Englishmen of the Lord-Allcash variety, and while it is true that very many of our Anglo-Saxon cousins are as unexceptionable in all their ways as the truly cultivated and highbred individuals of any race must perforce be, it is none the less certain that the large proportion of British tourists are distinguished by two stereotyped peculiarities of a most unpleasant kind. One of these traits is, not so much their intentional rudeness towards the 108 105 opposite sex, as a sublime indifference to the convenience and comfort of women, fairly amazing to Americans--who are, after all, the most gallant, or, to phrase it exactly, the most considerate nation in existence. One seat of our stage, for illustration, was occupied by two Englishmen--one a baronet--and a lady, the wife of the other. On leaving each stopping place, the manner in which the two men would return to the stage and select their positions on the shady side, leaving the lady to be afterwards helped into some sun-roasted corner by the servant, along with the rest of the traps, was a sight to marvel at. At one point, a poor little consumptive school-teacher, who had reached her backwoods home, was helped out by another passenger, a NewYorker, who took great pains in fishing out the numerous boxes and bundles composing her luggage. One of the Britons grumbled at the delay caused by this, and afterwards languidly commented upon the good nature displayed by the Easterner in taking so much trouble "for a stranger."

"Why, it wasn't a stranger ," calmly replied the New Yorker,

"IT WAS A WOMAN."

The retort was worthy of a Chesterfield and a Bierce combined, but the Englishman simply blinked. I doubt if the sarcasm would have gone home, if fired from a hundred-ton gun.

The other of the twin traits peculiar to the globe-circling sons of Albion is the patronizingly-obvious manner in which they seek to conceal their inward want of appreciation of everything not English. It is not so much what they do not say as their manner of saying what they do when in the hearing of those to the manner born. The implied understanding is that their praise is no more than a good-natured and would-be polite concession to their surroundings, but which they rather wish it understood they are really very far from feeling.

"Goodish trees, those," rather reluctantly said one of the trio referred to, to his wife, as the stage swung into view of a towering phalanx of sky-pillaring redwoods.

"Quite nice," yawned the lady through the sticks of her fan, "but they are so beastly high they quite give one a stiff neck 109 106 looking at them, and I don't quite like that sort of thing, you know."

The driver solemnly said he would see to it that the trees were grown shorter hereafter.

Even the Big-Tree Grove did not appear to strike these emotion-proof Saxons as anything particularly meritorious in the ancestral-timber line. Only once did a faint ripple of wonder steal across the face of milor. He was all unmoved when a horseman, sitting upright in his saddle, rode into the hollow trunk of a prostrate tree, nor did he change countenance when the rider emerged from a knot-hole a hundred and eighty feet further along. But when the driver calmly averred that the commissioners proposed mounting said tree on an axle, putting enormous lenses in either end and using it as a telescope, Sir William lost his presence of mind long enough to make a mem of the circumstance on his shirt-cuff.

To any reader who objects to this hastily-written letter, on the score that it doesn't refer particularly to the Yosemite, we would suggest that we haven't yet reached that Mecca of the great army of gushers, both private and journalistic. Somewhere beyond the mountains, upon which we turn to gaze at almost every line lies

NATURE'S OWN WONDER-LAND,

The famous valley, whose liquid name is now a household word unto the uttermost bounds of civilization. But yet we are not in the mood to hasten forward. It is something of a sacrilege to call the beautiful and restful spot in which we write by the prosaic and unsuggestive name of "Clark's." A large, white, cool-looking, generously-proportioned hotel, set in the centre of a noble amphitheatre of mountains, and surrounded in the near distance by a succession of verdurous forest-scapes, is a description that gives but an inadequate impression of the soothing charm that hangs about the place, as though the little valley had been scooped out by the hand of Father Time for Nature's own cradle when the earth was young.

After this æsthetic outburst, it may perhaps seem somewhat material to say that "Clark" is, and for many years has been kept by the Washburne brothers--Henry, Edward and 110 107 John--a trio that have solved the world-old problem of how to keep a hotel to an extent that will one day make their house one of the most crowded of our summer resorts for permanent guests. The railroad company has only to adopt the modest and eminently-practical suggestion made earlier in this epistle, to secure for these gentlemen the still wider appreciation their admirable accommodations and unobtrusive, yet kindly and thorough, hospitality so well merit. If their establishment and its surroundings are but a foretaste of what lies beyond, then the big, good-natured constituency of the Post will forgive the shortcomings of our travel-worn pencil this week, in view of the promise of better things hereafter.

The road from Clark's to the Yosemite is twenty-seven miles, and one of the few really enjoyable stage-rides on the coast. It presents a succession of imposingly picturesque landscapes, and, better even than that, is nearly all the way shaded by a dense growth of towering sugar-pines--a most grateful relief to the tanned and torrid traveler at this season of the year. The stage conveying the writer was driven by George Morton, a fine looking mulatto, and whom it would, doubtless, be but faint praise to designate as the most celebrated driver in these parts. While many sections possess reinsmen of more or less local notoriety, it is, perhaps, fairly impartial to say that the Pacific Slope contains just three famous drivers, whose claim to be considered the representative masters of their profession no one will care to dispute. These, in the order of their precedence, are: first, the renowned Hank Monk, who has enjoyed the much-coveted title of "King of the Road," since Greeley's day; next, the younger Foss; and thirdly, Morton, of whom his employers boast that in sixteen years he has never broken a strap or lost a nut. Nothing interests visitors from abroad so much as these California jehus, and it is a sight to see some

HELMET-HATTED,

Vail-enveloped English tourist convulsively clutching the siderail as the coach swerves at full canter around some dizzy 112 109 mountain turn, listening the while with bated breath as the driver confidentially discourses of moving accidents by field and flood, intermingled with marginal notes as to the undesirability of snapping one's brake on a down-grade along the edge of a thousand-foot precipice. Stagemen have a saying that anybody can drive two horses; that it requires education to drive four, but that six-horse drivers, like poets, are born, not made. They tell a story of a party of Englishmen who chartered a special stage of the Oak Flat road, and who stood the reckless speed at which they were driven, until near the close of the day their nervous systems were completely exhausted. They then stopped the vehicle, and made up a purse of twenty dollars, which they offered the driver on condition he would proceed more slowly the rest of the way. The "whip" calmly pocketed the coin, walked his team around a short turn ahead in the road, and pulled up at the hotel. They had only about fifty yards further to go.

Twenty-three of the twenty-seven miles referred to are thus agreeably placed behind one, when suddenly the stage swings out upon the brow of a mountain, the horses are stopped, and, pointing his whip forward into space, the driver ejaculates, " Inspiration Point! " This is the famous spot from which the first view of the Yosemite Valley is had, and the passengers crane forward and gaze with as much eagerness as if the

PEARLY GATES OF THE HEREAFTER

Were themselves ajar. Now, with the full expectation of being instantly denounced by the guide-book writers, sat upon by the Valley Commissioners, and excommunicated by the public at large, the writer wishes to record his honest conviction that this first glimpse of the valley is a disappointing one. This arises, doubtless, from three causes--first, the disadvantage of viewing an object of great altitude--like Niagara, for instance--from a level with its top; second, on account of the extreme rarification of the air in the vicinity, and last, from the exaggerated conception of the general proportions of the valley, resultant upon the descriptions of "gush-writers."

In fact, the whole landscape strikes the beholder for the moment as a pocket-edition of what he expected to see. So 113 110 easily does the eye take in the whole scene, that one receives the involuntary impression that he is looking at a painting, or an unusually good "set" in a theatre. This first impression, however, is materially, though slowly, altered, as the stage goes thundering down the zigzag series of benches, or steps, in the mountain-side that finally end in the valley floor. There, at last, the scene begins to widen; other points further along the perspective come into view, and the eye gradually gets its tape-measure to work, and, by sheer force of comparative figures, the spectator begins to appreciate the proportions of the scenery. Facing the incomer, and always the most imposing and best-remembered feature of the "Yo," is El Capitan, a rounded pile of white, almost polished, granite, that lifts its conspicuous front three-quarters of a mile into the air, the whole as trim, straight and rigid as a militia-captain on parade. Vis-a-vis to this, and pouring its shifting, feathery flood from the brink of the opposite cliff, is the Bridal Veil Fall, or the fall of the

"SPIRIT OF THE EVIL WIND,"

As the Indians term it, on account of the mysterious gusts that upon the calmest days play with the creamy sheet, and turn it into endless capricious forms, as though the curious wind-spirits strove to steal a peep at the bride beneath. And indeed it does not require a great stretch of imagination to picture the grim old Spanish Captain sternly waiting for his reluctant bride to dry the flood of crocodile-tears young ladies sometimes see fit to dispense on such occasions, and to lead her to the Catherdral, still further up the valley, while the giant pines stand in whispering ranks to see the ceremony, and the setting sun places a tiara of prismatic gems among the feathery plumes on the maiden's head as its wedding-gift.

But poetic imaginings have prosaic surroundings in a stage-coach, and the ordinary tourist exhibits no more sympathy with the romantic than the gloomy old Puritan Councilman who, history records, voted to tax poets double, because they "took so much satisfaction out of things." As the coach halted for an instant on the bridge at the base of this fall, we listened proudly for the comments of the passengers. It is always 114 111 interesting to compare the manner in which a vivid natural effect impresses different people. A Scotch tourist, on the front seat, said: "It's not half bad, that!" A Pine-street broker meditatively murmured: "That reminds me of the fall in Alta." A young lady from Mills Seminary remarked: "Pshaw! It doesn't look a bit like Honiton!" An Englishman jerked out: "Rather rough on the trout that, you know. Must be lots of dead fish at the bottom, I fauncy," and a large stockholder in Spring Valley sighed: "Gosh! I wish that was going through one of our metres!"

This was somewhat dispiriting to one who strives to believe that one touch of nature makes the whole world kin. As a forlorn hope we pinned our faith to the prettiest girl in the stage, who sat gazing upwards with glistening eyes, parted lips and a general transfigured expression. After all, we thought, it takes a well-educated,

CULTURED AMERICAN GIRL

To be in full accord with the grand harmonies of nature. After a long pause she turned her soulful eyes to ours, and, with a wistful, far-off, moonlight-on-the-lake expression, she said: "Don't you think they make horrid ice-cream in Oakland?"

After that we drove on.

On the way up the calley to Cook's, the first of the two hotels, the tourists start a chronic "crick" in the neck by gazing up at a succession of elevations and peaks, such as the Cathedral Spires, Three Brothers, the Sentinel and the Watch-dog--none of them particularly suggestive of their titles. In fact, one of the most disillusionizing features of scenic show-places is not only the general inaptitude, but the tiresome superabundancy of their nomenclature. In this regard the vertical walls of the Yosemite involuntarily suggest the shelves of a chemist's shop--so carefully is every succeeding projection affixed with its special label. The effect is confusing, and impresses one as an attempt to emphasize attractions whose simple majesty would be the better bereft of such trivial human familiarities.

As the traveler transfers his cramped limbs from the stage to the porch at "Cook," he turns for a moment to gaze at 115 112 the Yosemite Fall, which bisects the face of the northern cliff. This is at once the highest and most disappointing cataract in the world. Horace Greeley, who saw it about this time of the year, aptly referred to it as "a tape-line let down from heaven to measure the depth of the abyss below." Earlier in the season its twenty-five hundred feet of foam may be very effective, but as we write, late in July, it appears but a languid, slow-oozing thread of froth, whose reluctant stream one almost expects to see dry up and vanish as one gazes. Despite its

STUPENDOUS HEIGHT,

There is nothing of dignity or grandeur left in its appearance, nor has it even the unique charm of the Bridal Veil. Its chief utility is indeed its tape-line character, and as the eye follows the suds-like masses of its output in their apparent tedious course down the face of the precipice, one begins to entertain the first realizing sense of how high real estate is in the Yosemite.

A pleasant peculiarity of sight-seeing in the valley is the manner in which the passengers of an incoming stage-coach form themselves into a little community of their own, and thenceforward move about with a tacit unanimity as marked as are the dissensions in those traveling debating societies known as Cook's Tourists. The next morning, therefore, found our original load of thirteen wayfarers mounted on a saddle-train of as many fly-footed, though melancholy-looking horses, and heading up the best trail in the valley in the direction of Glacier Point. Our procession was led by the best-known guide in the valley, named Pike, and whose individuality would merit a place here were it not for a feeling that Bret Harte owns the patent-right for all that description of character-writing on the coast. Pike's voice has long ago disappeared into his boots, the result of a cold caught during winter service on the high trails, while, from the effects of a life literally passed in the saddle, his legs have dwindled in like proportion, as well as acquired a most buck-defying outward curve. Pike is as courteous and capable a guide as traveler could wish, however, and possesses only one trait that mars his popularity with male visitors. He always insists on placing the ladies of the 116 113 party next to himself, at the head of the line, a position claimed as necessary in case of their needing immediate assistance--a plausible theory that does not, however, explain why the prettiest girl in the lot is invariably stationed just in his rear, nor does it account for the fact that said beauty requires her stirrup altered at least once every hundred yards. The distance from the valley-floor to Glacier Point is about three and a half miles by guide and eighteen by tourist measure--two-thirds of it "on end," as John Muir, the geologist, would say. At intervals, the trail zigzags upwards into a series of sharp turns, as continuously-recurrent as the rounds of a ladder, and it is a unique sensation to look straight up into the air and behold a series of equestrain statues niched one above the other for a hundred yards over one's head, the whole being capped by a group composed of that nefarious Pike busily absorbed in the forty-first representation of his great

STIRRUP-ADJUSTING ACT.

About midway in our cavalcade that

"Like a wounded snake wound its slow length along."

Rode a Danish scientist, of some three hundred pounds weight, whose ponderous intellectual and physical bulk was such as to cause the animal he rode to groan and stagger at the short turns to the great horror of its rider, and the no less lively apprehension of the next following linesman, who momentarily expected to be swept over the chasm by a human and equine avalanche from above. The slow progress of Danish science operated to materially delay the nethermost section of the procession until an inventive genius, in the extreme rear, telephoned a remedy along the line. One of the party cut a long pole, in the end of which was fixed a hair-pin, in the shape of a goad. By energetically, though secretly, operating this persuader, the corpulent party's steed was urged up the rocky inclines in a manner that made the scientific hair to fairly stand on end.

Two-thirds up the mountain a halt was called on a flat projection, named Union Peak, or something equally unsuggestive, in front of which stands what to the writer is by far the 117 114 most interesting object so far encountered. This is a huge symmetrical rock, called the Agassiz monument. Shaped exactly like an inverted tenpin, weighing hundreds of tons, and balanced upon its smaller extremity like a club on the fingertip of a juggler, the beholder gazes in breathless expectation that the pressure of the next zephyr will send the toppling mass thundering down the mountain side. At the end of another well-stretched perpendicular mile the party unexpectedly come upon a small hotel, nestling on the cloud-skimmed elevation of Glacier Point. This hashery of the upper deep is kept by a bright, good-humored Irishman named James McCauley, and we would be false to that sentiment of gratitude that lurks even in a tourist's breast did we fail to state that here we enjoyed the best-tasting meal we had eaten since leaving 'Frisco, the repast including the two rarest of all dishes on the Pacific Slope--juicy, tender venison, shot from the tavern's back window, and mealy, in fact,

FEATHERY POTATOES.

Let no esthetic Eastern gusher uptilt a contemptuous nose at the prosaic pencil that can turn from such scenery to dwell upon baked potatoes. Let him who has never endured the heartburn attendant upon cheap Mongolian cookery cast the first spud. The soft sponge of time may wipe from our recollection some of the rock-hewn wonders that tower above us as we write, but the tender grace of Jim McCauley's potatoes will desert us only at the grave. Nothing but the want of a good elevator prevents Jim from doing a regular Baldwin Hotel business. Possibly this sincere eulogy is more directly due to the hostess of this aerial caravansary, who, by the way, proudly exhibited a pair of handsome little boys, the only twins ever born in the Yosemite, her maternal satisfaction not seemingly dashed by the ominous thought that the childish gambols of her treasures were to be conducted on the very edge of a five thousand-foot precipice.

And indeed it is something to stop the beatings of a chamois' heart to lean over the iron railing set between two verge-toppling bowlders on the peak's brink, and glance down into the bottomless, awful gulf below. It causes spiders of ice to crawl 118 115 down one's spine, and the hair of one of the party, whose hat happened to be off, as he bent over the rail, suggested an actor pulling the string of a "fright wig" in a minstrel ghost scene.

As a part of the usual programme, we experimented as to the time taken by different objects in reaching the bottom of the cliff. An ordinary stone tossed over remained in sight an incredibly long time, but finally vanished somewhere about the middle distance. A handkerchief with a stone tied in the corner, was visible perhaps a thousand feet deeper, but even a large empty box watched by a field-glass could not be traced to its concussion with the valley floor. Finally, the landlord appeared on the scene, carrying an antique hen under his arm. This, in spite of the terrified ejaculations and entreaties of the ladies, he deliberately threw over the cliff's edge. A rooster might have gone thus to his doom in stoic silence, but the sex of this unfortunate bird asserted itself the moment it started on its awful journey into space. With

AN EAR-PIERCING CACKLE,

That gradually grew fainter as it fell, the poor creature shot downward, now beating the air with ineffectual wings, and now frantically clawing at the very wind, that slanted her first this way and then that, the hapless fowl shot down, down, until it became a mere fluff of feathers no larger than a quail. Then it dwindled to a wren's size, disappeared, then again dotted the sight a moment as a pin's point, and then--it was gone!

After drawing a long breath all round, the women folks pitched into the hen's owner with redoubled zest. But the genial McCauley shook his head knowingly, and replied:

"Don't be alarmed about that chicken, ladies. She's used to it. She goes over that cliff every day during the season."

And, sure enough, on our road back we met the old hen about half up the trail, calmly picking her way home. Then only did we realize that we had been wasting our sympathy on an ironclad spring chicken of the regular Palace Hotel breed.

From Glacier Point the delighted observer takes in nearly every point of interest in the valley at one wide, semi-circular sweep of the vision. In the far blue ether the haze-softened 119 116 summits of Mounts Dana and Starr King lift their frosty foreheads to the sinking sun, and mark the barrier that lies between the Yosemite and its but yesterday-born rival, the Hetch-Hetchy. Near at hand, and seemingly but a step across the emerald-carpeted gorge, are grouped the North Dome, the Half Dome, the Cap of Liberty, and other vast bowlders, in the center of which the two loveliest gems of the whole stately picture, the Vernal and Nevada Falls, constantly recall the wandering eye to their own pre-eminent beauties. Back of, and still higher than our coign of vantage, rises Sentinel Dome--though why that all-comprehending eminence should be belittled by a repetition of that already thrice stale word it is hard to say. Its summit is marked by a giant, anvil-shaped configuration, upon which, if anywhere, did Vulcan forge the thunderbolts of Jupiter ere he gave battle to the gods. The Valley Commissioners are, therefore, hereby informed that the designation of the pile of building material in question, with all its dips, spurs, and angles, has been changed to

"JOVE'S ANVIL"

From and after this date.

During the descent the guide relieved the tedium of our saddle-galls by an account of the origin of the valley's name, and which, at the risk of invading the province of those solemn wielders of four-jointed words, the guide-book writers, we reproduce here. It seems that the Valley was originally tenanted by a small tribe of particularly unwashed aborigines of some five hundred persons. Not being of a Donnybrook disposition, they eschewed the pursuit of large game, and lived chiefly on scenery and fish. One day, while one of these sheep-hearted braves was employed in trouting at Mirror lake he heard a sort of ursine chuckle behind him. Desisting in his search for a fresh bug amid his capillary bait-box, the Indian turned and beheld an enormous grizzly in the act of choking down his entire string of fish. Being entirely weaponless, the noble redman made haste to scramble to the top of a large bowlder, conveniently at hand. While engaged in frantically blowing his police-whistle from this vantage ground, the bear began to climb up also. As his enemy was swarming up the 120 117 slippery granite, the Indian espied beside him a heavy, loose stone. This he dumped upon the rock-hugging head of the brute with such emphasis as to crack its skull between the two bowlders. The Indian then returned to his people, covered with perspiration and glory, and they, thunderstruck at the prowess of a brave who had slain a bear with his naked hands, at once dubbed him "Yo Semite"--that is, "The Great Grizzly." In course of time this deed became so vaunted among the coast Indians that the tribe referred to gradually adopted the appellation as a distinctive title--a course, by the way, that eventually led them to the war-path and resultant extermination.

We lug in this not-specially-pertinent relation, in order to pave the way for the announcement that the writer is himself about to take part in a bear-hunt. Some two miles from where this is written, and exactly at the base of El Capitan, is a stockyard, whose proprietors have suffered much from the depredations of some bears that descend nightly from the rocky ravines above. Their tracks show them to be three in number, one very large, and suspected by experts to be a grizzly. Already we have visited the pit, dug by the river-side, in which we propose to await the stealthy approach of the

MIDNIGHT PORK-LIFTERS,

And have superintended placing the bait-a leg of mutton and a pan of honey--just where it will appear to the best advantage in the silvery moonlight.

As we have just said, it is suspected that one of said bears is a grizzly. If, in next Saturday's edition, the startled reader of the Post finds this department decorated with reversed rules surrounding a touching obituary, he may conclude the supposition to have proved a certainty. The sorrowing public will then understand at once that the most gigantic intellect that ever illuminated Pacific Coast journalism is no more--has been stilled in the cold embrace of bears. We don't exactly weaken on our project, but yet it is a terrible thought that by the time these lines meet the reader's eye, the hand that writes them may be in a more or less advanced stage of digestion; that the cheek that hand now so pensively supports may be given to some baby bearling to cut its teeth upon; that--but we must stop; the bear idea, even, is too much for us.

At the conclusion of our last letter we left the reader possessed with anxious forebodings as to the result of a certain bear-hunt upon which the writer was about starting. Rather than keep the intelligent public in unnecessary suspense, we proceed to inform it as to the safe outcome of the said hazardous expedition. About half-past eight on the evening referred to, we deposited ourself, in conjunction with three other would-be Bruin-exterminators, in a pit dug in the sand on the edge of the Merced River, which stream is far and away the most attractive feature of the Yosemite, especially in this swim-enticing weather.

This subterranean ambush was in shape like the inside of a hack, and provided with seats for four; and was thus located to deceive the keen scent of the plantigrade prowlers. Into this apartment the party crowded itself, each member being provided with a rifle, a shotgun and a revolver, any spare chinks being filled in with bowie-knives and brass-knuckles.

As a further precaution against the escape of the enemy, a huge eighty-pound spring-trap, with teeth like a summer boarder, was set upon the trail leading from the can˜on back of El Capitan to the river. This last pleasing duty occupied the entire party about four hours. Any reader who has assited in setting a bear-trap in the dark knows exactly what we mean. 122 119 Two men are required to stand on the side-springs, which are of about ten-horse power apiece, while another folds back the jaws and a fourth adjusts the catch with a stick. During all of which the trap struggles like a Democratic repeater in the grasp of a policeman, grabs at everybody in turn, and gnashes its teeth worse than a ten-foot shark on a sand-bar. Shoeing a government mule is a picnic in comparison. However, after an aggregate rupture of three blood-vessels and nine suspender-buttons, the feat was accomplished, and the exhausted trappers retired once more to their arsenal. As perfect silence is an absolute essential while lying in wait for big game, the company beguiled the time by relating low-necked stories in telephonic whispers, and occasionally gauging the altitude of the rising moon through the focus of a black bottle. About one A.M. the garrison was divided into one-hour watches, and three of the hunters at once sank into profound slumber, interrupted only by the occasional nudgings of the

PICKET ON DUTY,

When the snoring became too vociferous. About six in the morning, the whole party, including the sentinel referred to, was awakened from a refreshing snooze by a blind pig falling in on top of them, much to the general disgust. On subsequent investigation, the trap was found to have disappeared, and presently a small tuft of hair was observed sticking out of the river. This was the tail of a bear that had gotten into the trap during the night, and who, finding his struggles to escape ineffectual, had endeavored to swim the river, the huge trap pulling down and drowning it. Through all this ursine circus, we lynx-eyed hunters had sweetly dreamed, although the bear, as we afterwards learned, had made more noise, when caught, than a primary ward-meeting, almost scaring into fits a lot of Diggers, from the Indian encampment near by, who had been prowling around the bushes with the frugal purpose of carrying off the leg of mutton and honey-comb we had laid out for bait.

These Diggers, by the way, are the shadowy remnant of the original Yosemite tribe, the derivation of whose name we referred to last week. This tribe, about the date of the 123 120 discovery of gold on the coast, consisted of about five hundred souls, and for a few years subsequently annoyed the incoming settlers of this part of the country by frequent cattle stealing forays. The stock captured in these raids somehow seemed to disappear from the face of the earth--at least, no one could find the least trace of its whereabouts. Finally, a renegade Digger reported that the cattle had all been hidden in a certain deep valley in the mountains, where there was a waterfall a thousand feet high. This was some time in 1852. A company of U.S. cavalry was furnished by the Government, and, joined by a force of some two hundred volunteers, the command started in quest of this mysterious stronghold. The Indian guide led them to a defile not far from Inspiration Point, and from there the troops let themselves down to the valley-floor

BY MEANS OF ROPES.

They found the valley filled with the missing cattle, and the Indians encamped in force in a live-oak grove, at the foot of Indian Can˜on, the then only practicable trail into the place. After a savage resistance the Yosemites were defeated, and fled up said trail, leaving seventy dead on the field. The soldiers destroyed their village, and returned to the settlements, driving a huge herd of stock before them. The victor's description of the scenery attracted the attention of Mr. Hutchings, the present capable Guardian of the valley, and its first white resident, who visited the place soon after, and made it known to the world.

The defeated Diggers made their way to the Mono Lake Indians, who were a grade higher in the aboriginal scale. Here the crippled tribe remained, hospitably treated and protected, until the following spring, when the Monos left their village for a general hunt. During their absence their guests, with characteristic Digger gratitude, stole everything portable, including all the well-favored young Mono squaws, and departed. When their hospitable hosts returned and discovered what had occurred, they were as mad as so many Alta stockholders, and pranced round, howled, danced the scalp-figure of the aboriginal German, and generally deported themselves like a visiting Lodge of the Independent Order of Red Men on a racket at the Cliff House.

Finally, the dissatisfied Monoites--who were only some two hundred strong--traveled several hundred miles east to an encampment of Piutes--fighting Indians of the first class; the genuine old, unmitigated bang-snatchers of the boundless West. These saddle-tinted buccaneers of the woods agreed to stand in with the Monos on their scheme of revenge on the trifling condition of their receiving a dividend of 100 per cent. of Yosemite assets after the opera was over, so to speak. This was agreed to by the Monos, and the allies started on the war-path to this valley, to which the Yosemites had returned with their plunder. One moonless night the Great P. and M. Traveling Combination stole cautiously down the ravine before referred to, upon their unsuspecting victims. Not so much as a pebble turned over, or a twig was heard to snap. In fact, the whole matter was conducted with special reference to its being written up

AS A DIME NOVEL

In the future. Just as the Yo's were putting in that beauty sleep so often referred to by young ladies, the surprise party pranced in like Captain Short's watch on an opium den, and the ungrateful tribe were annihilated, only eight braves and five squaws surviving the massacre. These thirteen escaped by their praiseworthy foresight in lighting out early in the session, and hiding in cracks of the rocks now known as the Royal Arches, and reached by means of poles which they pulled up after them. A portion of this remnant still inhabit the valley, their number having, by energy and close attention to business, been increased to about thirty. Their reputation for ingratitude survives their terrible lesson, however, and the writer was shown a white-headed, old, verde-antique centenarian, whom his people had turned adrift to die, on account of his inability to provide for himself. This venerable sachem lives in a sort of bark hovel near the road, through the door of which kind-hearted tourists returning from the trails toss coin, macadamized sandwiches and things. But the hour of the old chief has come at last. As we passed his hut this morning we detected a camper-out in the act of donating him a batch of amateur biscuits made with saleratus. When we repassed an hour later 125 122 the poor old fossil held a biscuit in either hand, and was chanting the weird death-song of his people between bites.

A noticeable feature of the Yosemite is the number of singularly natural resemblances amid the rock formations, and these apparently designedly placed by Nature to surprise the human eye. Of these the North and Half Domes are most conspicuous. The former is a huge mountain of cliff upon the top of which is perched a great inverted bowl or dome, of a thousand feet additional height, and the proportions of which are as symmetrically perfect as the dome of the Capitol at Washington. Directly across the yawning abyss to the east rises still higher the Half Dome, precisely such another formation, excepting that the hemisphere is again divide in twain from top to bottom, leaving the mountain capped by a sharply-defined

QUARTER-SECTION OF A GLOBE.

As a standpoint for the landscape viewer, the polished summit of this last formation is incomparably the finest in the whole range, towering as it does five thousand feet above the Valley floor and commanding its entire scope, from east to west. The drawback to its general enjoyment by the tourist is the undeniably hazardous nature of the present means of ascent, which from the top of the horse-trail to the apex of the eminence is by means of a rope nine hundred feet long. This cord lies upon the slippery surface of the granite slope, the angle never being less than forty degrees. The marvel of the matter is how this cord was first placed on that air-line trail by the spider-footed Geo. Anderson, a guide of the greatest strength and most iron nerve. A man ascending this dizzy slant presents about the relative appearance of a fly walking up the side of an inverted goblet. Very few visitors care to attempt it, unless under the supervision of this guide, Anderson, whose wonderful coolness was acquired as a sailor. The cord itself is hardly calculated to inspire the fullest confidence, being composed of seven thicknesses of common, hay-bale-rope. This, however, is knotted every few inches to assist the hands, besides which the climber can rest at certain intervals and anoint the soles of his feet with fresh mucilage, a bottle of which he carries in his vest pocket for the purpose.

Almost all the prominent points have some special romance or legend attached to them, but the guide churned off one anent this same Half Dome, about which we have our doubts. However, the intelligent public can decide for itself. It seems that, accompanying a party of tourists from Toledo, Ohio, a good many years ago, was a very beautiful young lady, whose magnetic brown eyes made her the belle of the Valley during her stay. A half-breed guide, who attended her party during their mountain rambles, became enamoured of the beauty, and exhibited the fact so vehemently that he was discharged. Discovering that the lady was engaged to a gentleman of her company, the humiliated descendant of Lo! the poor demi-Indian, resolved upon a frightful revenge. Hearing that the lovers were to make the ascent of the Half Dome on a particular day, the discharged guide, who was generally known as "Sandwich," on account of his being half bred--ascended an hour before-hand, and literally buttered a particular spot on the edge of the appalling precipice with bear's grease--though presumably not the same brand the drug-stores swindle the public with at two dollars a bottle. At all events, he rendered the projection in question (and which is called the

OH! MY! ROCK,

From being the place where the arriving visitor pauses to ejaculate) extremely "slickery." If the wretch had known anything about the properties of the banana-skin of commerce, he would have spared himself so much trouble--but never mind that now. Having arranged this oleaginous deadfall, he descended and watched the result from the Valley. The crowd on the hotel-porch below, who were watching the peak with their glasses, saw the distance-dwindled form of the lovers appear hand-in-hand on the summit. Suddenly they vanished, and what appeared to be a red-ink-line was ruled down the white face of the cliff. It was the sixteen-dollar cardinal stockings of the poor girl plunging to her doom. When the couple's distracted friends reached the base of the precipice, nothing but a fathomless sort of double-barrelled hole was found at its foot. This they filled in with appropriate ceremonies, and over it erected a twin headboard. About half-way up the cliff two shining 127 124 objects can still be seen, which are supposed to be the rear suspender-buttons of the gentleman. The place is known as the Lovers' Slide to this day.

Mirror-Lake, or Looking-Glass-Pond, as the guides irreverently term it, is a sheet of water so startling and unexpected in its effects that the imagination halts in attempting to depict its beauties at second-hand. To say that it is a forest-framed sheet of crystal water reflecting the entire surrounding and overshadowing landscape with singular clearness, is giving but an auctioneer's description of its unique fascination. It is usually visited an hour after the normal sunrise of the outward world, so as to catch the reflection on its surface of the Valley sunrise, or the moment when the great golden disc shows its rising edge over the eastern heights. Taking his station by the lake's translucent marge just before the sun's image appears, one watches with breathless astonishment and pleasure the changing tints and altering shades of the east-fronting peaks, as the yet invisible god gilds their tops and shoots his ambushed arrows into the air-soaring gorges that lie reversed at his feet. All this is incomparable, but yet all as nothing to the ineffable

HALO OF GOLDEN GLORY--

The all-flooding yet not blinding light that finally transfigures the unearthly heaven-painted, silver-canvassed, verdure-framed picture over which the rapt gazer hangs.

Cloud's Rest lies at the extreme eastern verge of the Valley, and is visited chiefly on account of its being the highest of all the points in the Valley proper, of which it commands a distant birdseye view, as well as one of the peaks of Starr King, Mount Dana and other giants of the far beyond. It is reached by a roundabout and somewhat difficult trail, among the turns of which one occasionally meets the festive rattlesnake, now a comparatively extinct tenant of the lower valley. As we clambered up the lung-taxing foot-trail that completes the last half-mile to the Rest, the writer heard, while pausing to get his fifty-second wind, a subdued whirring noise close at hand. At first we imagined our exertions had broken the mainspring of the gem-encrusted watch presented to us by the Czar of Russia, 128 125 and were about examining that valuable timepiece, when a big rattlesnake at our feet cast off the topmost bight of its coil and buried its fangs in the alpenstock upon which we leaned, with such force that it could not, for the moment, withdraw them. We instantly took advantage of this circumstance to dance a double-shuffle upon the snake's main extension with our hobnails, a proceeding that caused the reptile to shuffle off its mortal coil with dispatch. We then pocketed the eleven rattles of our adversary as a warning to snakes in general not to mistake an inch and a half cane for a journalist's leg. That is the one insult we can't stand.

The summit, or ridge, of Cloud's Rest is as sharp as a boarding-house carving-knife, and about as badly nicked, the topmost hump of this geological camel's back being the point where the occasional vagrant cloud that spots Yosemite's curving blue roof is said to rest until shoved off to make room for the less etherial tramps from below. From this pinnacle the visitor gets more and better atmosphere for the money than from any other locality in the range, and here, for the first time, he fully realizes the impracticability of the ideas of a well-known agent of a 'Frisco paint manufactory, who suggested that the Valley scenery would be greatly improved by a good

COAT OF WHITEWASH.

As usual, the guide had his little legend to dispense concerning this point, and his story has since been so often indorsed as the cold fact by the permanent residents here, that we relate it for the special benefit of our scientific readers.

It appears that an Englishman named J. Barrington-Tyners, of Little Buffington-on-the-Biff, Dorsetshire, England, is the most famous entomologist in all Europe. Two years ago his collection of insects was absolutely unique, and needed but a single rare specimen of butterfly to comprise every known variety on the planet. The missing link was the scarcest of all varieties of that genus, and is scientifically designated as the Skidmoricus Duflickiana --at least, so the guide said, though how he derived his knowledge we can't imagine. At any rate, the variety is only found on the California coast, and there only at an elevation of between ten and eleven thousand feet above 129 126 the sea. It is described as a large insect of vermillion-hued body and silvery white wings, the latter being curiously marked with red veins, and pendent from the edges of which is a fine, silk-like fringe of golden filament, resembling the bullion of a full-dress epaulet to a striking degree. Mr. Tyner has long offered the most princely sums for this specimen without avail. One day, while studying a map of the creature's habitat, he discovered that Cloud's Rest was directly on the proper level, and easily accessible. The next morning found the scientist on a steamer bound for New York. Accompanied by a couple of man servants he came at once across the continent, reached the valley, and without an hour's delay, camped upon the topmost ridge of Cloud's Rest. For over a month he remained there almost as great a curiosity to tourists as the mountain itself. Silent, moody and abstracted he passed his time in patrolling the slippery ridge, net in hand, and keeping a hawk-like lookout for the Skidmoricus what's-its-name. At last his half-frozen, half-starved servants held a caucus of two. They nominated their master for the insane asylum, and decided to remove him to civilization by force. Early the next morning, while the insect-hunting Shylock was tossing in restless slumber, they fastened a rope to his waist, and were about to pinion his limbs when

WITH AN EXULTANT YELL

Their employer sprang to his feet, seized his net, and darted toward the dizzy edge of the cliff. They struggled to restrain him, but with quivering finger he pointed to a silvery object flickering towards them along the crest. It was, indeed, the Skidflicker thingumbob. Nearer and nearer it came, now skimming the edge of the rock, now swerving farther out over the bottomless chasm! Would it come within reach, after all? That was the question. Standing on the very uttermost rim of the precipice, the pale entomologist stood ready for a swoop, while his attendants hung on to the rope and braced themselves back. The butterfly came nearer, and still nearer, but when almost within reach, it suddenly fluttered out six feet from the verge. In another second it would be gone! With a wild shriek the bug maniac sprang into the air! The shock brought 130 127 the two servants to their knees, but they held on with a death-grip, and after a desperate struggle landed their master on the rock once more. He was trembling like an aspen, but it was with delight, for in the meshes of the net he held clutched to his breast was the coveted specimen. The next hour he descended and left for England.

Altogether, this is one of the most pathetic incidents of the Pacific slope. As soon as the trout-fishing, which is magnificent just now, peters out a little, we shall start in on a superior society drama founded on this episode and entitled, "The Bug Maniac, or the Du--." But never mind; we don't believe in double titles, anyway.

Speaking of fishing, Mr. Tom Hill, the real-estate artist, in company with a friend, yesterday caught eighty-one thumping trout within a mile of the hotels. Mr. Hill has sold a good many landscapes to visitors this season, especially to English tourists. It will be hard luck if we don't get even for that Alabama business somehow.

Yesterday and the preceding day the Yosemite was favored with windstorms of remarkable violence, beginning without warning in the middle of the afternoon and as suddenly subsiding about sunset. The tremendous violence of the pent-up wind as it swept down the Valley's rocky channel, twisting and bending the great pines and oaks before it, afforded a genuine sensation to the visitors, who clustered upon the verandas to gaze awe-stricken upon the overhanging heights above, in the momentary expectation of beholding the vast jutting bowlders dislodged by

THE ARTILLERY OF THE SKIES,

And thundering down upon their cowering heads. The murky and oppressive darkness with which both these storms closed was remarkable. It was almost literally thick enough to be cut with a knife. In the midst of this ebony atmosphere the constructor of these simple annals started to walk from Barnard's Hotel to Cook's, which excellent caravansaries are a generous three-quarters of a mile apart. Of them, more hereafter. The distance is accomplished by means of a peculiarly fatal description of dead-fall, called a plank-walk. This new 131 128 variety of man-trap is ingeniously constructed so that every fifth plank either throws the walker in the Greco-Roman style, or else slaps up viciously and takes a piece out of his knee-cap. It is the boss profanity-provoker of the place, by night or day, and we never run the gauntlet of its perils without wishing that the Valley Commissioners were compelled to do a six days go-as-you-please over its length at the point of the bayonet or a bradawl.

As we were saying, we started from Barnard's in the Cimmerian darkness alluded to, and endeavored to steer so as to hit the hither end of said walk, which begins about three hundred yards from the hotel. It was like trying to find a policeman, or a black cat in a dark cellar. After half an hour blindly casting about in the gloom, we dimly descried a large white rock ahead, and the idea occurred to our giant brain that perhaps by standing on this stone we could catch a glimpse of our surroundings. As we bounded lightly on the rock, it bounded, too. In fact, the rock proved to be a large white cow, and by the time we had turned a double somersault and descended head-first in a manzanita bush we had evolved stars enough to light us clear home, and to bed, which last haven of rest we reached, as Mrs. Partington said of the South during the war, "in a condition of complete arnica," and fell asleep dreaming that we were the the cow-catcher of a locomotive on a down grade, and also a newly arrived aerolite. Anything, in fact, rather than the unimaginative and veracious Derrick Dodd.

As the school-boy reserves his reddest apple for the last, so does the writer approach the mention of the Nevada and Vernal Falls as incomparably the most perfect, most alluring and most memory-haunting attractions of the whole Yosemite. The larger of these, the Nevada, and which is also the uppermost, streams over the abrupt face of an almost perpendicular cliff, and comports with its name, in presenting one mass of snowy foam from top to bottom. To say that it is six hundred feet in height conveys little idea of its proportions to the eye, as all measures of distance are merely relative in this almost painfully rarified atmosphere. As viewed from below, it resolves into a rock-framed picture of unique power and completeness. The spume-flinging torrent at its base rushes on in a series of diversely picturesque rapids, and under two thunder-quivering foot-bridges, until the flying and frantic Merced takes its final leap into the valley below as the Vernal Fall. In addition to the generally stormy beauty of these rapids, there are two spots of singular effectiveness on the half-mile or so of incline between the Nevada and the Vernal Falls. One of these is

THE APRON,

An enormous flat surface of rock, over which the water spreads 133 130 in a thin, translucent sheet of intense swiftness, the sides and bottom of which are chafed into an edging of lace, very apron-like in its appearance indeed. The other is called the Emerald pool, and is an oblong sheet of deep, sheeny water of the darkest emerald hue--that magnetic and peculiar green only found in the suddenly halted stream of a cataract, and so noticeable, by the way, at Niagara.

Arriving at the upper brink of the lower fall, the visitor leans over a massive natural baluster, and allows his eyes to drop with the plunging sheet beside him into the eider-down bed of the river below. And it must, indeed, be but a dull and unappreciative soul, who, as he views the scenes from this rock-riven balcony is not impressed with the apparent minute care taken by nature to bring together every accessory at her command to render this, her chosen effort at landscape painting, perfect to its furthermost details. The fall is like a section cut out of Niagara, and displays every tint and shade of falling water, from the darkest blue to the whitest flakes of scintillating froth.

On both sides the can˜on is rock-walled, and above that again huge pines cast a still more verdurous shade in the gorge. Far beneath the vertical feathery mass of water is beaten into a very smoke of drifting spray as it impinges upon the huge, implacable bowlders that thrust their black tops stubbornly through the foam, as though hurled down from the heights above by the hand of some primeval Titan, vexed at the slumber-dispelling roar of the flood. The slope that stretches upwards from the Vernal's foam-shod feet is carpeted with a bed of moss so vivid and velvet a green, that its contrast with the snowy water is something enchanting. It is from this moss the fall takes its graceful name. Over this enamel of eternal verdure the wind-wafted spray fills the air with a shower of diamonds, and above these again floats always the vividest and most permanent of rainbows, the whole forming an effect that fascinates the eye and centers it there in spite of the more majestic surroundings--a scene sure to live in

THE ART GALLERY OF MEMORY

As a vision of Diana's sylvan couch, canopied by Niobe and frescoed by the pencil of the sun god himself.

But there is no rose without its thorn. The foot-trail, from which only can the beauties of the Vernal Fall be properly appreciated, is the stoniest, most slippery and exasperating path in the whole valley. It is true that the valley authorities are now constructing a really fine new trail to this fall on the other side of the ravine, but there is no reason why the alleged path that connects Register Rock with the Ladders should not be placed in a passable condition. To the average traveler the safe transit of the few hundred yards between the points mentioned is more essential to his appreciation of the valley's attractions than all the carriage-ways now being constructed on its floor. And, while we have our hand in, there is no reason why we should not follow the example of other ignoramuses and work off here a little gratuitous advice to the Valley Commissioners anent their functions generally. As a matter of course, while the several members of that body are possessed by the best intentions in the world, it is hardly possible that some of their views should not be insensibly colored by the influence of local surroundings and circumstances. After all, it is the opinions of the average traveling public that should chiefly dictate the Board action, for it is for the amusement and satisfaction of the general sightseer that the valley has been set apart by the government. It may be put down as an assured fact that the points that impress the casual spectator as meritorious are the most so, and the faults that seem such to the same impartial looker-on, are the ones to be avoided. For illustration, the present system in regard to the saddle-trains in the valley is one that strikes the average traveler as needing reconstruction. By the contract system now prevailing, the right to furnish saddle-horses and guides is the exclusive property of one firm. No one can allege that, so far as it goes, this firm does not perform its service well. The horses are good, the guides capable and polite, the charges reasonable, and the whole business conducted in the pleasantest manner by that most capable young Superintendent,

"CHARLEY MILLER,"

But from the circumstance that the carriage privilege is under a separate control, which claims the right of all transportation 135 132 to certain points, much tact and strategy is necessary for either company to avoid infringing on the other's rights, and at the same time avoid offending tourists. For instance, it is hard to make a horseback-loving visitor understand that he cannot go to Mirror Lake or the Bridal Veil otherwise than on wheels, nor can the saddle-eschewing guest comprehend why a visit to "Snow's" cannot be made partly by wagon and the rest by foot. Of course, the owners of these privileges will tell you that there are no restrictions of this kind upon the movements of the guests, but that is only theoretically the fact. Practically, the case is just as stated. The result is, that the present system, unavoidable though it be under existing circumstances, begets in the traveler's mind a sneaking suspicion that he is being imposed upon. This feeling is equally objectionable to both prince and pauper, and serves to cut down the sojourn of many to the briefest possible stay--a fact rather hard upon the hotel-keepers. The apparently obvious remedy for this would be the placing of both the saddle and carriage rights under one control, or else throwing open both businesses to competition, the necessary tax upon them being collected in the shape of license fees.

And this brings us to the more delicate subject of the hotels. While both houses that divide the business here have their individual merits as to location, management, fare, etc., it is obvious that neither affords the complete and thorough accommodations the circumstances of the case demands, or their proprietors would wish. The Yosemite is pre-eminently the show place of our whole continent, not even Niagara out-rivaling its fame. It is within a few hundred miles of San Francisco, and there is no very obvious reason why it should not possess one summer-resort hotel of the very first class--a sort of modified Del Monte, as it were. If the proprietors of the two existing houses were to combine in such an enterprise (as I have reason to suppose they would gladly do), it would be better for every one; better for the tourists, and immeasurably better for the prosperity of the valley; for in that case the Yosemite would become, what it deserves to be, a place of permanent resort for summer guests, instead of being, as now, merely one of the

SHOW-WINDOWS OF NATURE,

Into which the casual passer is expected to glance in passing.

We know it is argued that by the terms of the Act granting the Valley Charter the Commissioners have not the power to execute a lease of sufficient length to authorize the construction of such an establishment, but to any one aware of the facility with which an amendment could be tacked on to the original bill, conferring such special power upon the said board, the objection is somewhat puerile. At the worst, the State is quite able itself to construct and lease such a hotel for its own profit and California's reputation.

That the present Commission is doing a great deal towards one's enjoyment of the Valley generally no one can fail to see. The Guardian is now busily engaged in the construction of further fine roads and substantial bridges, but there comes a time when--sacrilegious as the thought may appear--the visitor wearies of gazing at even Yosemite scenery, and when the diversion of a good croquet or tennis ground, or a fine swimming-pool would be more than welcome.

At all events there are just three items of immediate improvement for which we personally ask, and in so doing we can safely claim to represent the wishes of ninety per cent. of the visitors. The first of these is the repair, or to speak more exactly, the construction of the foot-trail alluded to as having an alleged existence on the south side of the Vernal Falls, from Register Rock to "the Ladders" by which one gains the top-level of said fall. And while they are about it, these same ladders, or steps, might admit of a little extra bracing. Already the hand-rail of the upper flight sags ominously under the grasp, and causes the climber to look down with some emotion to where, underneath the present steps, still cling the old-time perpendicular ladders, and especially upon a broken round near the top whose ends droop like a pair of horror-clasped hands. It was from that treacherous bit of timber that Campi, the restaurant-man of Clay Street, fell to his death upon the cruel rocks below. And yet some dyspeptics think that Providence hasn't an eye upon these indigestion-dispensers.

The second improvement in question is the damming of 137 134 Mirror Lake, so as to increase both the reflection and superficial surface of that sheet, as well as render it more available for boating. Apropos, a couple of light Whitehall boats would not be out of place--the craft by which it is now laboriously navigated having a general resemblance to the vessels in which whole families in Amsterdam go to church, its general design having evidently been furnished by the ancient firm of Noah & Sons, and its repairs superintended by

"SOFT-SHELL ROBESON,"

As that genuine old sea-dog, Admiral Farragut, used to call the then Secretary of the Navy, in grim allusion to the flimsy hulls accepted by that patriot. A few white and some black swans would also add a finishing touch to this lovely lake.

The third improvement most urgently called for is the substitution of a series of stone steps and an iron hand-rail in place of the famous "Anderson Rope," as a means of ascent to the South Dome. As stated elsewhere, this cord is nine hundred feet long, and fastened at say a dozen points in its length by temporary iron staples, none of them entering the rock more than three or possibly four inches. During the writer's ascent last week, in company with Editor Osborne, of the Bodie Free Press , and Anderson, the plucky originator of this aerial route, we found, when about a third of the way up, that at one place the line was secured to a pin by only two strands of ordinary hay-rope. By adding our own strength to this flaw, the next climber was enabled to gain the same ledge, after which the rope was carefully repaired. As the slack cord between the point referred to and the next pin above was some six or eight feet, it will be readily understood that a sudden backward drop of even that distance down the almost perpendicular face of the rock, would result in breaking the hold of the most muscular climber and sending him

TO KINGDOM COME

By the shortest practical air-line route. As it was, the good man from Bodie had a narrow escape, and the rope's conclusion not to break under the circumstances is but another and remarkable illustration of the power of the press. A series of wooden 138 135 ladders or steps has been talked of as a substitute for the rope, but the kind above suggested would certainly be more durable and satisfactory, as the warping suns, violent winds and crushing snows--so weakening to wood structures--would then have little effect. At all events, visits to this illimitable breath-catching standpoint, will be like those of angels until some more reassuring aids to the great Yosemite monkey-act are provided.

After all is said and done, perhaps the best-paying trip for the Yosemite visitors is that to Eagle Peak. The trail to this point is not now in the best condition, but an occasional land-slide or discussion with a rattlesnake merely serves to vary the monotony of the climb. This should be the concluding skyward journey the visitor should take before leaving the Valley, as from this jutting eyrie the eye takes in the only view that embraces the entire scope of the great gorge below from east to west, besides affording a practically new and unlooked-for aspect of the most familiar points. After gaining the platform, or as it is called in mountain parlance "The Saddle" of rock from which the Yosemite Fall takes its preliminary leap, the trail climbs still higher, and leads through the open and beautiful Tuolumne meadows, until the final "lift" to the peak's summit is begun. It was from this soul-satisfying vantage-ground, if any, that the Son of Man was tempted by Lucifer. In fact, no one but old Luce himself could have started such an infernal trail. The title given this peak shows that a desire for picturesque designation sometimes outruns the opportunities of fact. There are no eagles in the Yosemite--nor have there ever been in the memory of the oldest inhabitant; nor buzzards, for that matter, nor crows, if we except the three black ones of gossipy memory. The result was that formerly, when tourists reached the point in question, and indignantly demanded their proper proportion of eagles, the guides were very much disconcerted indeed. The visitors claimed that they were entitled to eagles, and did not propose to be cheated out of anything on the bill of fare. In fact, the feeling was such that the old Board of Commissioners finally held a special meeting on the subject, which resulted in a live eagle of good disposition and 139 136 steady habits being procured, and chained by the leg at the apex of the peak. As long as the trails remained open the proud bird of freedom was regularly fed from the lunch-baskets of the tourists, but when winter came and the mountains were blocked by avalanches of snow, the fettered emblem of our national dollar starved to death. Everything was done to succor the unfortunate bird, but in vain. Even the ingenious plan of the kind-hearted Barnard, who fired Bologna sausages and beefsteaks at the Peak from a Fourth of July howitzer, placed on the top of his hotel, failed to connect. As might be supposed, the hotel-steak of commerce struck the rock and bounded back into the Valley--a process, by the way, that seemed to improve them so much that it has been since continued. When the tired new arrival is awakened in the morning by a heavy report, he is satisfied with the explanation that blasting is going on in one of the trails, does a little himself and continues his slumber. But if he should cross the river and enter the grove beyond he would discover the affable John B. with his sleeves rolled up, loading the howitzer beside a huge pile of spring-chickens and refractory tenderloins. The deceased eagle is now replaced by a stuffed specimen. Its native element has dealt rather hardly with this lone

EFFIGY OF THE AIR.

The saw-dust trickles from several rents in its skin, and now and then past the up-gazing trail-climber "a feather is wafted downward from an eagle on its roost."

Speaking of mine host Barnard, and who, by the way, is a type of the breezy, whole-souled, home-like landlord--now gradually becoming extinct in these days of elevators and be-diamonded room-clerks--the following characteristic story may be new to some of our readers: When the genial B-- kept a hotel at Merced, he discovered an ingenious and equitable system by which each guest could be charged in exact proportion to the amount of food consumed by him. His scheme was to have every new guest bite into a wax mold upon registering, a deduction of five per cent. per diem being made for each tooth thus shown to be missing--a party with ten missing molars, for instance, being entitled to a rebate of four-bits 140 137 a day, as not able to devour the full rations of a dentally complete boarder. This system proved a great advertisement, and Barnard was doing a land-office business, when four Frisco drummers, who hadn't a tooth between them, arrived together. This frugal quartet pocketed their sets of false teeth before registering. After they had gummed it on him for about three months, Barnard was compelled to shut up shop. He says he has the gum-game played on him now occasionally, but not to that extent.

Speaking of registers reminds us that in the saloon kept here by the popular Captain Utter, he of the esthetic name--and which is as complete and ornate in its appointments as though it had been but yesterday transferred from Kearny Street--can be seen a mammoth register of tourists that is singularly full of interest. A description of persons and careers suggested by a multitude of the names it contains, would be more entertaining than the cleverest novel. Beginning years back, when the Yosemite was but in its infancy as a show-place, the volume contains the name of almost every person of note who has visited the coast. Opposite each name is written some appropriate comment by the signer. Among the Presidents are the autographs of Hayes, Grant, and Garfield. The first adds a characteristically precise and mediocre sentiment concerning the scenery, followed by a line in which the somewhat over-done simplicity of his amiable better-half appears. Grant leaves behind him a sententious

CALIGRAPHIC GRUNT

Of approval, while Garfield records a breezy, though reverent, description of his impressions. This last is especially redolent of the man--the real gold of his nature always cropping out from the rugged rocks of his political surroundings. The scientists are there, the great writers and thinkers, their remarks tinged more or less with their pet geological hobbies--such as the childish glacial theory, for instance. It is a motley assemblage, this convocation of signatures, and some of the aristocratic cognomens of the old world especially find themselves in strange company. The Duke Alexis--who must have been a royal good fellow, from all accounts--asks all good Russians to 141 138 admire the grand scenery if they will, but to "adore" Captain Utter's sublime whisky punches; while, upon the succeeding line, Jerry Thomas, the famous New York barkeeper, fraternally adds his professional indorsement of this high praise. The Duke of Sutherland has a few sensible and unhackneyed words to write, blandly unconscious that the preceding autograph is that of a certain Hebrew Uncle of Kearny Street, who goes on to suggest that visitors whose sojourn among the beauties of nature has been prolonged to the point of bankruptcy can pledge their watches with him by express, and receive the proceeds by the next stage. The names of many celebrated women appear, the female writers running through the whole gamut of merit, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Helen Hunt Jackson. The "remarks" of the

MANY BRIDAL PARTIES

Are noticeable for the even tenor of serene satisfaction that pervades them, and it seems almost cruel to indulge in a grin of cynical disinterestedness as a felicity-agitated handwriting records the thrilling fact that "Birdie" or "Tootsie" is "just like the scenery, too grand for anything !"

Register Rock is a locality shrewdly set apart by the Guardian as a place where idiots of the fourth class can record their petty names in tiresome reiteration, and thus spare the other rocks and trees from this universal blemish of showplaces--a device in which, we rejoice to say, he is largely successful.

One does not feel like condemning this practice so severely, however, in the face of the following peculiar circumstances resultant from it. Some two or three years ago, it became necessary to cut down a fine, large, live oak, which stood in front of Barnard's Hotel. In splitting a section of this tree, at a considerable distance from the ground, an outer shell of bark and wood, some four inches thick, peeled off. Underneath this could be seen two names and a brand or monogram cut into the wood. The portion covering these, and which was estimated to be the aftergrowth of at least a quarter of a century, bore the same letters in the sharpest bas relief . How little the persons who thus inscribed their names, perhaps early in the exploration of the valley, imagined that during all 142 139 this time nature would preserve and copy their work and eventually reproduce it for the amazement of a future generation. The names thus duplicated by the slow growth of years are W. Haight and James Welty , the monogram being a D, surrounding an R. This curious specimen of nature's handicraft has been placed in the writer's charge by Mr. Barnard, for transportation to San Francisco, and donation to the State collection on Sutter street, superintended by the indefatigable Professor Hanks. [It can now be seen there.-- Author .]

Next to playing pedro for drinks, the favorite amusement is the tracing of certain alleged resemblances of faces or figures on the wall of the cliffs in different portions of the valley. Near the hotel is what is called

"THE GNOME OF THE VALLEY,"

A huge black stain near the Yosemite Fall, said to have a photographic semblance to an aged darkey playing the banjo. Near this is the "Running Deer," although galloping cow would seem to depict the situation more exactly. The "Mouse Trap," the "Clothes Line," the "Pinch of Snuff" and others have a more or less visionary existence in different parts of the valley. The "Clock" and the "Keno Check" are reasonably distinct. In shadowy proportions on the face of the South Dome, one is asked to trace the outlines of a recumbent figure attached to an inverted bottle. This is called "The Democrat." On the polished granite of El Capitan a large, red, oval spot, pendant from streaks of the same color, is called "The Chest Protector," though its position awakens the suspicion that it is being temporarily used by its wearer as a substitute for a bathing-suit.

One of these days some journeyman painter will make a good thing of it, by letting himself over these precipices by a rope, chalking far-fetched resemblances on their faces, and then allowing guests to discover them for the drinks.

Nothing is so keenly aggravating to one possessed of a keen sense of the eternal fitness of things as the absurdly hurried manner in which the Yosemite is visited by a certain class of tourists. We allude to that all too common variety of the human species, that, having more money than brains, and less culture than either, visit places for the mere satisfaction, or 143 140 eclat , of saying that they have seen them, and without the slightest thought of the act affording pleasure or information themselves or others. This most pitiable ambition is nowhere more conspicuous than here. As these lines are written, a large party from Philadelphia, which arrived after dark this evening, is preparing to leave before sunrise to-morrow morning. And yet these people traveled three thousand miles to see the show-places of the Pacific Slope! The leader--or, perhaps, keeper--of this prize collection of numbskulls, explained that they really were too much hurried to stay longer, but that they meant to take home "a good collection of Yosemite photographs" as an offset. We are waiting now until the requisite number of snorers show that these candidates for the Blind Asylum are all fast asleep. Then we shall go for our matchbox, lock all the doors and set the house on fire!

Hearing what goes on in the adjoining room is not a particularly difficult matter in this region; indeed, it is unavoidable. The valley houses are none of them hard-finished; in fact, the rooms are usually divided by thin cloth or paper partitions, and the just-arrived Mrs. Caudle, who, while retiring, feathers into her worser-half for flirting with that saucy young hussy in the stage, orates in blissful ignorance that her remarks are enjoyed by every one under the same roof. One morning, at Cook's Hotel, some newcomers rushed into the halls in the most unmitigated

UNDRESS UNIFORM,

Under the impression that an unusually violent earthquake was in progress. They discovered that the vibration was caused by a boarder in a distant wing cleaning his teeth.

Whatever may be one's individual estimate of the scenic wonders of the great "Yo," it is certain no one can leave its precincts, after a sojourn of a few weeks, without taking with him a most enduring recollection of the hearty kindness and courtesy they have enjoyed at the hands of its permanent residents--the little community that finds its home amid the shadows of these giant cliffs. At all events, the writer's memory will often look back with regretful pleasure to the many acquaintances of his midsummer loitering beside the air-cleaving 144 141 Merced. To them all, hail and farewell! The sedate and hospitable Cook, and his ubiquitous and all-obliging lieutenant, Brewster, full of timely kindnesses and cultivated information. Snow, the "Josh Whitcomb" of the Nevada Falls, the cookery of whose decidely original partner renders his mid-torrent nest not the worst place in the mountains for one to be snowed in at. Barnard, mine host of the perennial joke, his gentle wife and her bevy of

BLACK-EYED CENTAURESSES,

Including Miss Abbie, the tourist-charming Diana of the Valley. Then artists Hill and Robinson, whose fly-fishing rivals their painting, which is saying a great deal; McCauley, of roast-potato fame; Anderson, he of the chamois foot. Fitch, Coffman, Stegman, Liedig, Kinney, Baxter, all of them. And last, but not least, Guardian Hutchings, with his bright eyes, silvery beard and air of high-bred, unobtrusive courtesy that marks the possessor of that inborn patent of gentility no circumstance can alter. To this whole-souled and unforced gentleman--this Chesterfield of the High Trails--salutation and adieu. May all the kindly hearts under his abstract and beneficent guardianship as pleasantly remember Derrick Dodd.

Like a good many other stage-roads in this alleged Golden State, the Big Oak Flat line, from Yosemite to Milton, has its share of dust and bumps. These, however, are largely atoned for by the extraordinarily good meals one encounters on the way--notably at Crocker's and Priest's. And, by the way, we wonder if the managers of stage-lines in general have any realizing sense of the keen appreciation of fair fare--amounting, indeed, to devout thankfulness--on the part of the tired, muscle-strained and comprehensively cross and wearied traveler? The owners of this particular line in question doubtless believe that good turnpikes and careful drivers are the main recommendations of their route, but we feelingly assure them that Mrs. Crocker's entirely chewable beef and Mrs. Priest's peculiar brand of fried chicken cause all other evidences of their enterprise to fade into nothingness by comparison. Next to these very palpable alleviations of the long stage-ride in this country of plentiful food, infamously cooked, the best beguilement of a journey over a pike of which the gravel used in its construction is, to say the least,

SOMEWHAT COARSE,

Is a chatty and companionable set of passengers. Nowhere does the peculiar type and bent of a traveler's mind appear more involuntarily than in a crowded stage-coach, and nowhere does the student of character find a better field for his observations.

"No," said the passenger with hay-seed in his hair, and mahogany-burned hands, as our stage passed a well-boring derrick, "I don't go much on those artesian wells; in fact, my family was ruined by one once."

"How so?" asked the tourist with a field-glass and a green vail.

"Well, it was this way," said the granger meditatively. "Fifteen years ago my father was the biggest grain-raiser on the San Joaquin--acres, no end. One day he took it into his head to try the artesian irrigation scheme. The well agent agreed to sink him 300 feet of pipe for a thousand dollars, and if they didn't strike water then, to keep on at a dollar a foot until they did. So they got to work and bored down 300 feet, then 400, then five, but no water. Then we all tried to persuade the old man to give it up."

"And did he?" asked the woman with two bird-cages and a bandbox.

"Nary time," sighed the farmer. "You see my father was just the bull-headedest, grittiest old cuss you ever saw. He swore he'd keep on till he fetched the moisture, if it cost him every acre he'd got. In the course of a year they had gotten down 16,000 feet, and not the first drop yet. The old man just left everything else, and kept hanging around that infernal hole, and working fifteen hours a day--actually slept in the derrick. He'd got water on the brain, and he nailed a sign up over the works ` Water or Bust !'"

"Did he bust?" asked the fat man on the back seat.

"You bet he did. Mortgage after mortgage was put on the ranch, and acre after acre was sold to buy more piping and auger-rods. Twenty-five thousand feet had been sunk and still no water. The old man's last dollar almost had gone. But he had got his back up, and nothing could stop him--had sorter gone crazy on the subject; wouldn't

LET WELL ENOUGH ALONE,

Don't you see. As the family was almost starving by this time, I went down to Frisco and shipped before the mast. Two years after I was in Canton, and concluded to take a little trip through the interior. You know, of course, that in China 147 144 they sleep on mats placed right over the dirt floor. One night, while I was snorting away in a tavern up in the tea district, I dreamed I was at home, and could see the old man still fussing around that eternal well, and swearing like a pirate because the mules turned the bit so slow. Pretty soon I was waked by something moving under the mat, and--I don't at all suppose you'll believe it, gentlemen--but when I sat up I heard the old man's voice plainer than ever. I was completely flabbergasted for a moment. I struck a light and lifted up the mat. Then what do you think I saw?"

"Why, a ghost, of course," gasped the bird-cage woman.

"I hope I may be paralyzed, gentlemen," continued the granger, solemnly, "if I didn't find under that mat the end of the old man's well-pipe. He had kept on until he had broke clear through!"

"You don't mean it?" said the fat man.

"Yes, I do," replied the story-teller, with emotion, "and the worst of it was that, without thinking, I stoops down and says: `Hello, dad!'

"`Is that you, Jim?'says he, kinder weak. `Where are you, my boy?'

"`In China,' says I.

"` Bust !' groans the old man, and he dropped dead in his tracks."

"That's a very extraordinary episode--very," said the English nobleman, who had "tipped" five dollars extra to sit up with the driver.

"Yes," sighed the bereaved granger, "and I have often thought, gentlemen, that if, instead of speaking, I had just emptied the water-jug into the pipe, it might have saved the old man's life."

There was a solemn silence after this pathetic recital, until the campaign orator on the roof asked if there were many grizzlies left in these parts.

"Well, not to speak of," said

THE EXPRESS MESSENGER,

Who was holding the thin woman's baby while she was loading a milk bottle. "The last grizzly I saw was while I was Sheriff 148 145 over in Mariposa County. There were a couple of desperadoes prowling around on the upper Merced, stealing horses, and the whole country was watching for them. Finally I tracked one of them into a can˜on up near Hite's Cove, and hand-cuffed him while he was asleep. I started down the trail to Coulterville, with the hoss-jerker tied on another mule, and at night camped in an old log hut near Tamarack--about half way. You see I didn't fear that my man, `Sagebrush Dick," would get away, as he was heavily ironed, and I carried a couple of six-shooters. About midnight there was a fumbling and shuffling around the outside of the hut, and we heard the mules stampeding.

"`Great Scott!' says Dick, `there's a big grizzly laying for us!'

"I made a rush and barred the door, which was pretty stout, and then shouted and fired a couple of shots. But the bear didn't go away. He kept on snuffling round and growling like a tourist at Niagara Falls. It was getting to be a pretty tough fix, for the mules had skipped, you see, and I knew that when a grizzly was hungry he never weakened. My saddle-bag, full of provisions, was hanging against the wall, and the bear kept crowding his paws through a couple of loop-holes in the logs and trying to drag it through. I saw, by the size of the paws, it couldn't be less than a two-thousand-pounder.

"`I say, Sherry,' whispered Sagebrush Dick, `I've an idea. S'pose you just take these irons offen me and slip 'em on the bear. Then he can't get away, and you can go out and shoot him like rollin' off a log.'

"I didn't much like the scheme of releasing the hoss-snatcher, but then he had no weapons, and, besides, was worse scared than I was. So, as it was our only chance, I unlocked the handcuffs, and I took one and he took the other. Pretty soon the bear's paws came through again, and we snapped 'em on quicker'n lightning."

"That was a grand idea," coughed the Englishman, whose open mouth had become filled with dust.

"But wait," continued the Messenger. "I then took a pistol in each hand, unbarred the door and stole round outside the house; but

THE BEAR WAS GONE!"

"Gone where?" asked the politician, through the top of the door.

"That just puzzled me ," went on the ex-Sheriff. "I went back into the hut, and, begosh, Sagebrush Dick was gone too. The paws were there all right enough, with the irons on 'em, but there wasn't any bear--no, nor hadn't been. The fact was the great grizzly act had been done by Dick's partner, who had followed us up. As I stood there, swearing in the dark, I heard a wild laugh, way down the trail, where the two pals were cantering off on my mules--the Sheriff's mules, mind you. I found out afterwards that Dick's partner had a pair of grizzly-paws, which he wore as shoes when he went to steal cattle, so that the tracks would make it 'pear like grizzlies had got away with the meat. Great scheme, that; but I never have heard the last of that paw dodge, nor never will. Why, gentlemen, over in Mariposa they call me 'Paw Peterson' to this day."

"Great mining country this, once," said the young man with a cigarette cane, pointing to a distant Chinaman shoveling the red gravel of a petered-out placer mine into a long tom.

"Yes, once ," put in the way passenger in the canvas overalls. "I've seen the day when there were eleven thousand souls back there in Chinese Camp; 'bout eleven without the thousands, now, all told."

"Big nuggets in those days, eh?" asked the man with the field-glass.

"Bout the biggest was found by a partner of mine, named Bill Staggitt," returned the way passenger, retrospectively. "You see, Bill was a superstitious sort of cuss; believed in omens and witch-rods and all that sort of nonsense. He scratched around these gullies with the worst kind of luck for a long while, and was about giving up, when one night, after eating nothing but doughnuts for supper, he had a dream that right under a big white stone on a hill, 'bout a mile back, was

THE BOSS NUGGET

Of the diggings. The next night he dreamt the same thing, and the next. You see Bill was busted, so that he couldn't 150 147 buy a square meal, and these big, greasy, Chinese-fried doughnuts would make a man dream most anything. However, Bill hunted around till he finds a white stone on that very hill, digs under it, and I'm blessed if he didn't strike the father of all nuggets--it panned out forty-one hundred dollars."

"That was lucky," said the young man with a cigarette.

"Not much, it wasn't," concluded the way passenger, as he prepared to get out. "What do you suppose Bill did with the money? Why, he spent the whole of it for doughnuts. Had two Chinamen frying night and day. Used to eat as high as a hundred every night before he turned in. He died of dyspepsia in less'n six months. Just below here, gentlemen, you'll pass a milestone with his epitaph on it: ` Bill Staggitt, Doughnuts Did It .' We buried him right against the milestone, so as to save time. Made a good headstone, too, you see."

"Stage ever stopped on this road, driver?" asked the timid passenger with trout-flies in his hat.

"Never stood up but once," said the brake-shover, with some embarrasment, "and then the road-agent didn't get nuthin'."

"Go ahead, Jack, an' tell 'em about that," said the Express Messenger. And, being further urged by the proffer from the politician of one of those peculiar campaign cigars, which the sellers will not allow to be smoked on the premises, the driver rather reluctantly proceeded.

"Well, the fact is, gentlemen, before I came to California I lived on a farm in Western New York with the old folks. I had one brother named Stephen, and, though he was our mother's pet, he was hot-tempered and stubborn, and had a hard time to get along with the guv'ner. Not but what Dad was good enough to both of us in his way, but Stephen didn't like farm work nohow, and Dad was as stiff and stern as iron about every one doing his share. Steve often swore he'd run away, but when he saw it would most break the old lady's heart, he'd think better of it and hang on. One day, however, Steve and the old man had a terrible row in the hay-field, and that night when the time came for Steve to

DRIVE HOME THE COWS,

He got up, kissed Mother, shook my hand, and rode away towards the pasture on old Billy. The cows didn't come home that night. Billy never did. Five years after that the guv'ner died, and I came out here to make a winning to try to keep the old lady comfortable in her old age and sorrow, for the loss of them both, you see, had broke her up considerable. Besides, I kinder mistrusted that Steve had come this way. Well, 'bout a year after I took to staging, I was driving down this here very road one dark night, with a full stage and a big treasure-box aboard, when a masked man stepped out of some manzanita bushes and put a double-barrel gun onto me.

"`Throw down that box!' says he."

"Only one man! Why didn't you shoot him?" interrupted the timid passenger, frowning savagely at the bird-cage woman as he spoke.

"Y-e-s. I've heern that talk before," replied the driver, drily; "but when a man's got both hands full of leather, and the other fellow's got the drop on you,

SHOOTING DON'T GO.

"`All right, pard; go easy there!' says I, and I stooped down to heave the box out of the boot. As I did so, the stage-lamp shone through the eyeholes of the robber's mask, and I saw it were Steve. His eyes were just like his mother's, and I'd a knowed her eyes anywhere. I could see, too, that just then he looked at me sort o' hard, as though he didn't make me out exactly. So I leans down over his cocked gun:

"`Brother Steve,' says I, kinder quiet like, `hadn't you better hurry home with them cows? Mother's a-waitin' for the milk.'

"` My God !' says Steve, a-droppin' of his head. `Drive on, Jack.'

"An' I driv on."

On the principle that a prophet is more honored out of his own country, the local estimation of the Cliff House is altogether disproportionate to its Eastern fame. Traveling residents must have noticed that San Francisco is hardly ever conversationally mentioned on the other side of the Rockies without the said resort being referred to as in some way indispensably connected with our city. When one approaches Boston, the intent of visiting

BUNKER HILL MONUMENT

Forms an item of the programme unconsciously laid out by the tourist, and in the same manner a wish to "take in" Captain Foster's sea-fronting resort, is invariably the first desire expressed by the new arrival at our hotels.

But as the mountain in labor often brings forth a mouse, so do the visitors' anticipations dwindle before the prosaic realities of the case. At the end of the once famous but now comparatively unused Cliff-House road, the stranger beholds a not specially remarkable building on the edge of the cliff, from whose balcony visitors gaze at the squirming inhabitants of the three seal-rocks with very much the same internal sensations caused the esthetic stomach by the sight of a lump of Limburger cheese,

HOLDING A LEVEE.

But the expected throngs of fashionable people, the long array of splendid equipages, the festive stock-operators, and open-handed California millionaires, "settin'-'em-up" for everybody in sight, exist now in tradition only--and very dim tradition at that. Not but what the "raptures and roses of vice" have their occasional sub-rosa innings at this disappointing spot, but the naive remark of a young Boston beauty, as her party drove away from the Cliff the other day, aptly illustrates the prevailing criticism of strangers. She said, with a sigh, "Why, I don't think it a bit naughty. Nothing but those stupid seals, after all."

The stereotyped procedure gone through on visiting "The Cliff" has been so monotonously repeated by drivers in that direction, time out of mind, tht every carriage-owning resident knows it by heart.

The first thing to do is to hand over one's horses to the small army of hostlers that rush forward at the rate of two men for every leg the horse stands on. Then the ladies are seated on the balcony to watch the seals, while the gentlemen go off in an unanimous body to hunt up a mysteriously-indispensable field-glass in the bar-room. Somehow that particular glass is never found. After awhile the gentlemen return, munching crackers, the ladies vote the seals to be "Nasty Things!" the vehicle is extracted from some remote shed, two-bit pieces are handed to everybody within reach, and the procession moves on. This is about what the Cliff House amounts to at present, although, if we can believe all the fine things Mr. Sutro, the new proprietor, promises the public, we are soon to have a sort of California edition of Covent Garden by the sad sea wave. Why some comprehensive scheme of the kind to utilize and make a popular resort of the

NOBLE SWEEP OF SEA BEACH

Lying between the Cliff House and that forlorn old relic of flush times, the Ocean House, four miles further up the beach is indeed a mystery. Instead, our people have been content to take a tedious three-quarter-hour journey by boat and rail to 154 151 Alameda, or mingle with the hoodlums in the sewer-tainted swash of the North Beach covers for their bathing recreation; and all this while one of the most splendid beaches on the whole coast, fronting the outer sea and backed by the park itself, has been deserted, save by the government lifeboatmen, an occasional horseback party and the gulls. Why there should not be bathing-houses without end music-stands, hurdle-races, enormous crowds on Sundays, and other evidences of civilization here, as at the Manhattan and other Coney Island beaches, we should like our professedly far-seeing capitalists to rise and explain. A drive along the ocean beach from the park entrance to Lake Merced Road is about the best use one can put horse-flesh to on this side of the bay. About half-way up the smooth sweep of shining sand lie the now almost-buried timbers of the stately King Philip, the great bark that was driven ashore here some four years ago in a gale, and whose dismantled fram is slowly but surely being sucked down by the restless lips of the seductive sand. Not far from this spot a curious accident happened to the Duke of Sutherland during his recent visit, and which will doubtless be new to our readers. In fact, we took a solemn oath not to reveal it until His Grace was safely out of the country. It seems our noble visitor was "taking in the Cliff" in company with Governor Perkins, Count Smith, of the Palace; Nicholas Luning, Captain Kentzell, Bishop Alemany, Mr. William Emerson and a few others of our most prominent citizens. Whether they remained too long at the Cliff listening to Captain Foster's denunciations of the Fish Commissioner who had dared to declare the captain's sea lions a

FISH-EATING NUISANCE,

Is not upon record, but certain it is that soon after the party had entered upon the beach-drive the Earl hilariously insisted upon all hands taking a dip in the white-crested breakers. They proceeded to disrobe in the carriages, and, in course of time, returned from the surf, dressed, and drove on, entirely oblivious of the fact that their guest was missing. By the time they had stopped to discuss the Chinese question at the "Halfway Houses," and other places of resort on their way, kept by the descendants of Dick Turpin, they had entirely 155 152 forgotten the existence of "His Imperial Nibs," as they called the genial and efficient nobleman in question. Late that afternoon the driver of a carriage on the beach was startled by hearing a voice from between his wheels calmly remark:

"Don't run over me; stupid!"

Looking down, the reinsman was doubly astonished to observe a man's head lying on the beach and violently ducking to escape being crushed. It appeared that the Duke, finding himself bereft of his apparel and friends, had adopted the experiment of digging a hole in the sand and covering himself up with the same, thus keeping himself from freezing, and enable him to philosophically await the arrival of assistance and rheumatism. The public may not place the childlike confidence in this pathetic story that we do, but all the same we herebywarn all rising young dramatists, as well as the St. Jacobs Oil fiends, that all rights in the same are reserved.

Speaking of the Golden Gate Park recalls two very pertinent problems we have often puzzled our alleged intellect to answer: first, why is it that its regular driving habitues invariably pursue the same monotonous route in going and returning, from one year's end to another; and, second, why it is they prefer to speed their fast horses over the smooth but flinty and spavin-producing park roads, instead of the old

POINT LOBOS ROAD,

Which is even more of an ideal trotting highway than ever the famous Haarlem Lane of New York, it being longer, straighter, wider and generally in better order than the latter. After passing the few acres of landscape gardening at its entrance nothing more tiresome than the dreary, sand-haunted sameness of the park drives can be imagined, while the old road, on the contrary, is dotted with objects of more or less interest along its entire length.

There is the Chinese Cemetery, for instance, where the passing believer in Communism and the rights of man can at any time behold the inevitable tramp feasting upon the varnished roast pig and other funeral baked meats set out to celestially regale some just-departed Mongolian. There are divers race-tracks also, including the famous one of the Pacific Club, 156 153 which, in its unused grandeur, aptly symbolizes the characteristic San Franciscan habit of going up like a rocket and coming down like a stick.

There is no place in the world where enterprises of great pith and moment are started with more whole-souled energy, and dropped with more apathetic suddenness, than on this coast. There are probably no club-grounds in the country, not excepting Jerome Park, better adapted for racing, and its kindred amusements on a large scale, than the one referred to. In every way its fittings are worthy of the chief city of the coast, and yet, since the great alleged $30,000 race won by Rutherford, four years ago, hardly a single race or event of importance has taken place there.

The writer met the jockey of Rutherford while dining at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, a short time after that huge sporting wrangle, and, in the course of a conversation on turf matters, the astute prodder of horseflesh said, with a child-like and ingenuous smile, as he passed the beans:

"Would you like to know

THE DEAD INSIDE FACTS

As to how that race was won?"

"Why, you rode the best horse, didn't you?" we asked.

"Not a bit of it," replied the jockey, with a grin. "The fact was, that Rutherford was only about the fourth choice, and was not rated at more than eighth or ninth in the pools. True Blue, Katie Pease and Thad Stevens all had the call over Ruthy. But it happened that my horse was a "bolter," and to steady him, and prevent his flying the track, I put blinders and goggles on him. You noticed them, I suppose."

"There were two horses rigged that way," we replied. "Exactly; Stevens was a nervous critter, also, and as soon as his trainer saw how the goggles steadied my horse, he put 'em on Thad, too. The day before the race a big idea occurred to me. I got a couple of pairs of magnifying lenses and quietly put 'em in place of the plain glasses in the goggles of both horses. Catch on to the idea?"

"Well, partly."

"The only difference was, that in Stevens' bridles I fastened 157 154 the glasses with the bulge inside , so as to make them diminishing glasses, don't you see?"

"Like looking through the wrong end of an opera glass, eh?"

"Exactly; the result was, that while Rutherford was encouraged all the way by the course seeming only a couple of hundred yards long, the quarter-flags appeared ten miles apart to Stevens. You see, a horse can be discouraged, just as well as a man."

"Great scheme, that."

"Well I should smile. Ruthy supposed he was in for a little quarter-race, and it kept up his heart, so that when we had nearly done the last mile and swung into the homestretch, and I called on him to let out his last link, he thought the judges' stand was right under his nose, so he came home like an express-train on a down-grade; but Stevens, who saw he had about fifteen miles further to go,

WENT ALL TO PIECES,

As you remember, and almost laid down on the track, he was so mentally caved in, as it were."

There can be no question as to the genuineness of this story, but we deliver it to the intelligent reader at importer's risk, for all that.

A few years ago it used to be alleged against the approaches to the Pacific Club track that they were badly infested by local highwaymen, who made night hideous to moonlight driving-parties by their little assessments. These far-seeing knights of the road took elaborate care only to "stand up" outgoing pleasure parties, well knowing that the superior acquisitions of the Cliff House waiters left very little to be taken by folks of the same kidney who were compelled to rob openly.

A pathetic incident concerning these gentry is recorded as occurring near what is known as the villa entrance to the Park, only last season. A party of four gentlemen and one lady was stopped by a couple of masked men and their valuables demanded. The males of the party reluctantly shelled out their pocket-books and watches at the mouth of the persuasive pistol, when the lady, who had suffered severely in stock speculations, sobbingly offered to turn over her trinkets. However one of the freebooters returned them, with a profound bow.

"Madam," he said, "I am pretty hard up, but I am not a hog. I haven't the gall to rob you of everything ."

"W-w-h-a-t do you mean?" stammered the surprised female.

"Behold!" whispered the highwayman, allowing her to peep under his mask. It was the countenance of her late broker!

But "the boys" have to do something to keep body and soul together these hard times.

These nocturnal depredators were finally broken up by a device accidentally hit upon by the newspapers--the originators, by the way, of all real reform in this latitude. The enterprising dailies got to sending out reporters to watch for items. The natural result was that the prowling journalists got themselves "stood up" every few minutes by the highwaymen, to the latter's intense disgust, and the steady crop of oroide watches and uncovertible meal-tickets thereby amassed finally broke up the business.

But the day of stagnation along our coast suburb is nearly at an end, if half the projects on foot culminate in any practical fulfillment. There is the Ocean Shore Railroad, which promises to make a veritable Manhattan Beach of Halfmoon Bay. Something energetics is to be done to improve the sea-front of the Park, and to make a drive along it practicable at all tides; and last, but not least, the auriferous stream that gushed from the Sutro Tunnel is to be flumed all over the Cliff House property, so we are assured, until it shall become in good earnest one of the

BOSS SHOW PLACES

On the coast. Then, indeed, will its attractions be more worthy the true inwardness of the appended self-explanatory lines, and which the fact that they have already appeared in this column must be excused, in view of their eminent appropriateness to the subject in hand: "ONE OF THE BOYS."'Twas "one of the boys" whom the doctors had cinched,Of horses a connoisseur fine,Who'd gambled away half his life, nor yet flinchedWhen Death won his women and wine.

But he sent for his jolly companions of yore,And, when they all circled his bed,He bade them fill up for one last bumper more;"Here's hopin' to meet you!" he said."Let them hitch to my coffin my two-twenty horse,Each friend bring a fast-trotting `crack.'On the road to Lone Mountain turn in at the courseAnd spurt me just once round the track."And when you have dumped me, don't linger a man,To weep idle tears o'er my `stiff,'But shovel me under as fast as you can-- And keep right on out to the Cliff!"

Last week we were in receipt of a letter from one of the veterans of of our Pioneer Association--a '48er, in fact. This venerable landmark wrote in tremulous characters to say that, like the clergymen in the quack medicine advertisement, "his sands of life had nearly run out," and that he was daily expecting his summons to join the innumerable caravan passing through that other Golden Gate leading to the saccharine future. But the pathetic old fossil went on to say that he shrank from the thought of going hence with the one great wish of his life unaccomplished. He did not desire to draw the curtains of his eternal couch about him without seeing at least a single reference in the local newspapers to Goat Island. This, he went on to explain, either from a truly remarkable coincidence, or on account of some secret understanding among journalists, had never occurred since the day he first entered the bay and cast anchor in the lee of that landmark. Up to date his most careful scrutiny had not detected the faintest mention of it in the public prints. There was an oppressive mystery about the matter somewhere. The island was certainly prominent enough to deserve an occasional reference; but even the thousands of people who passed it daily on the ferries never even casually alluded to it. Sometimes he almost persuaded himself to believe that the mid-water protuberance in question was a geographical myth, and he could 166 163 only convince himself to the contrary by a trip to the waterfront. We hear constantly, he continued, of balls been given at Angel Island and prominent citizens being drowned off Alcatraz, but no one ever heard of Goat Island being even run into by one of our Lardy-dah yacht crews--something that cannot be said of any other bit of real estate on the whole bay. Through all these years our aged correspondent had patiently awaited the first printed recognition of the island's existence until the subject had grown to be a monomania with him, and now, as a final desperate resort, he was impelled to throw himself on the writer's generosity, and beg him to devote an article to that long-ignored portion of the earth's surface, so that the patriarch might go hence in peace.

There was no possibility of resisting this plaintive appeal, and, although we ourselves dimly remembered the existence of such a spot, we forthwith unpacked our porcupine quill to attend to its case. That Goat Island, despite its size, is so veritable a terra incognita is mainly due to its superproquinity (this word can be unjointed and carried in an ordinary trunk for use as a fishing-rod or to hang pictures) to the city. It is, therefore, one of what poor, quaint Dick Winship used to call the

"MOUSTACHE MYSTERIES"

Of common life, meaning thereby that it is always the thing directly under their noses that people never, by any chance, notice.

Speaking of Winship, recalls his famous duel with the Frenchman at Marseilles. Dick was then Second Lieutenant of our Scorpion, stationed there at the time, and as usual kept the whole fleet and half the town on nettles through his endless practical jokes. The slang expression for Frenchmen in those days was "frog-eaters," and the wife of a French captain of militia having presented her lord with twins, Dick had the "nerve" to tender the happy father, at a public banquet, a stuffed group, consisting of a big frog holding on its knees a couple of smaller ones. Of course there was a challenge, and when the captain's seconds appeared, Winship as the challenged party, gravely insisted on the duel being fought in the dark, 167 164 with pistols, one shot only being allowed to each man. This new addition to the code made a terrible stir, but as Dick held firm, the Frenchman was finally forced to submit. On the appointed day, after dinner, the principals were placed, blindfolded, and pistol in hand, in a room at a hotel from which every particle of light had been excluded. At a given signal on the closed door, the antagonists removed their bandages, to find themselves in absolute darkness, listening to the beating of their own hearts, and each afraid to fire first, for fear of thus exposing his location to the other. Dick quietly took off his shoes, and feeling for the chimney--in front of which he had taken care to be placed--he crept up the flue, descended through a trap-door in the roof, slipped into a carriage and rejoined his dinner party, which at once devoted itself to making a night of it, in the highest glee possible.

The next morning they returned to the hotel and opened the room, which had been as silent as the grave all night. Kneeling in his corner, every muscle quivering with the unbearable suspense, was the militia captain, his auburn hair turned as

WHITE AS SNOW

By the horrors of that interminable night.

Speaking of duels reminds us of a joke played upon old Judge Poland, M. C. from Vermont, during the war, by that then important body knows as the "Third House," or the "Lobby." It seems that all the more prominent "log-rollers" were interested in passing a large cotton claim as a"rider" to the "General Appropriation bill," and which claim the good old Judge, who was one of the old school, smooth-bore, flat-bottomed style of statesmen, was determined to oppose. The item in question would be reached some time on the last day but one of the session, when the Judge was entitled to the floor. What "the boys" feared was not so much Poland's opposition, as the certainty that he would occupy the floor until the morning hour expired, thus killing a vote on the claim. The morning previous, the fertile brain of Sam Ward, the "King of the Lobby," as he was everywhere known, conceived an elaborate plan. He hired a variety-actor named Sample to make up as a venerable, white-headed, "down-east" farmer, 168 165 and to appear before the Committee on Elections, where he accused Poland of all sorts of bribery and collusion. The old M. C. was wild with rage. He spent the day searching for his defamer, who, when found, coolly proposed a duel on the Monument lot, near the Potomac, the next morning. Carefully egged on by the plotters, the gentleman of the old school consented, and the next morning was on the ground, attended by Sam Ward and various other apparently indignant seconds. The slanderer was not on hand, however. Washington's alleged monument then, as now, was an uncompleted shaft, some 250 feet high, upon whose top, and reached by a series of mouldy ladders within the shaft, was a weather-beaten old derrick. After solemnly waiting at the foot of this edifice for an hour, a large envelope suddenly

FLUTTERED FRON THE HEAVENS,

And fell at the feet of the sanguinary group. It contained a note from the missing principal, in which he confessed that the charges made by him were false and uttered while in a state of intoxication. His remorse at thus having defamed one of our country's most illustrious statesmen, he said, was such that he had determined to take his own life, and that all the world might know of his shame and reparation, he proposed hanging himself on the top of the Monument. The readers of this startling epistle at once hurried out to a proper distance to view the summit of the shaft. There, sure enough, they could plainly descry the limp form of the repentant farmer, dangling from the derrick--white beard, plug hat and all.

As the suicide had carefully fastened the shaft entrance on the inside, there was nothing to be done but to send for the Coroner; meanwhile the Judge was placed in a carriage and sent home deeply affected. During this brilliant little comedy, the claim was passed.

Sam Ward afterwards had the enormous gall to take old Poland round to the newspaper offices to aid in having the tragedy kept out of the papers on account of the victim's family. It was a sight to see the old Judge ply his red-bandanna as he read the deceased's last note to the different snicker-choking editors. The whole thing was beautifully handled, however, 169 166 and we feel sure that when these lines meet his eye, through the medium of some clipping Eastern paper, the good old Member will, for the first time, learn how complete a hoax was played upon him.

Speaking of Poland, reminds us of a man who victimized a large number of Baltimore society people during the war, and obtained considerable coin by airing his misfortunes as a "Polish refugee." When finally exposed and arrested for obtaining money under false pretenses, he was acquitted upon proving himself to be a runaway bootblack. What an immortal renown might the Judge in the case have secured had he only possessed the foresight to have imprisoned the maker of this diabolical pun for life, and thus established a precedent for the extermination of the punning fraternity everywhere.

Probably the only thing equal in destructiveness to the modern pun is

THE GLASS BOMB.

Billy Rice got off an alleged pun at the minstrels the other night that would have exterminated the Czar at the thousand-yard range.

There was an old lady on Oak Street who was insanely fond of cats, of which she possessed a great number. In the midst of her feline felicity a man moved into the next house who owned a large bulldog, an animal distinguished by an unusual fondness for cat's meat. The result was, that in spite of the old lady's protestations and misery, she was finally denuded, as it were, of her entire catalogue, except her particular pet, the very apple of her eye, a big brindle Thomas, which she called "Nocturne"--though "Bulletin" would have better expressed his alacrity in getting on the fence in the hour of trouble.

One morning even this solace of her lonely lot was taken away. She found the badly-chewed form of her treasure in the back-yard, while his ten front toe-nails still sticking in the top of the boards showed all too plainly his failure to "catch on" in proper season. Now this bereaved old lady

CAT CONNOISSEUR

Was wealthy, and a traveling heir had sent her from Russia a glass bomb as a curiosity. After going into full mourning for 170 167 her pet, the cat's relict, so to speak, had its remains stuffed, and with the said bomb carefully hidden amidships in the figure's anatomy. The next night she placed the dummy on the ash barrel in the alley, and awaited the result. In a short time there was a terrific explosion, and the next moment the entire side scenery of the neighborhood was painted with bulldog. The next morning the old lady was found with the dog's tail driven into her windpipe, stone dead, but with a cherubic smile upon her lips, and--but we can no longer see through our blinding tears to continue. Why, oh, why is it that novelists continually re-produce the same hackneyed, tiresome scenes, when true, natural, unforced incidents like these are happening around every day--every day?

But this is a digression. We were going to say that what hydrophobia is to a dog the habit of punning is to the in - human being, and it is about time that our local physicians stopped playing pedro in the Coroner's back office and told us what to take for it. A good many people in the vicinity of Petaluma and like localities honestly believe that Guiteau was hanged for killing the President, just as though hanging for murder wasn't one of the lost arts in this country. The real facts are that one of the witnesses for the defense testified to the assassin's proclivity for punning as proof of his insanity. From that hour

THE MAN WAS DOOMED!

The subject of hangings reminds us that in the good old antebellum days these amusements were much more common. One day old Judge McKewen, of the Criminal Court of the D.C., was walking up Pennsylvania Avenue, when he passed Henry Clay and Daniel Webster arm-in-arm, both favoring him with a very cutting nod indeed. The hot-tempered old jurist instantly wheeled round and demanded the cause of this treatment.

"I believe you sentenced a man to be hung yesterday?" replied the ponderous Daniel, gloomily.

"Well, it wasn't one of your constituents," said the Judge, jocosely.

"No levity, sir," thundered the great orator. "You 171 168 sentenced him to be executed on the first of next month, didn't you?"

"I did."

"And you knew that Congress adjourned on the 4th. Why in blazes, sir, couldn't you have waited until the next Friday, so as to give the boys a chance?"

We are aware that this incident has been omitted from the life of Webster, but we intend prowling around Congress next spring with a petition to have it wedged into the congressional archives somehow.

A man who was hanged in New Orleans for wife-murder, in '68, surprised the crowd by smiling affably as the Sheriff adjusted the cord.

"Do I tickle you?" asked that official.

"Oh, no," replied the condemned, with a chuckle; "my mother-in-law missed her train, and can't get here now until this evening. I was just thinking how disappointed she'll be."

P.S.--The high-foreheaded managing editor of this first-class publication has just returned the above manuscript to the writer with the puerile objection that it doesn't contain any reference to Goat Island. He says we can either change the matter or the title, but

WE SHAN'T DO IT.

The foregoing is all the information needed about Goat Island by any one except the pioneer relic referred to, and he probably died long before he got this far into our article. All it is necessary to know about the island is that it still sticks baldheaded out of the bay, except on foggy days and when an overflow is caused by Captain Kentzell going in bathing at North Beach. The only other reliable piece of information concerning it we received from a fishy old party who occupied the next pile to us while bobbing for tomcods at Long Wharf last spring. He explained, between bites, how the island came to have its name changed from Yerba Buena to its present weirdly romantic and musically liquid appellation.

"You see," said the old tomcoder, "before the government took possession, the island was claimed by a squatter 172 169 named Beasley. Old Bease was a crusty kind of a hermit, and he determined that there should be no picnics or other crimes perpretrated on his property. He therefore secured a billygoat of ferocious size and disposition, and turned him loose as a sort of fire patrol--that is, he fired everybody off the place. When parties from this city would apply for permission to devour sandwiches on his lonely domain, old Beaseley would grin and say, "All right! you bring the bread and meat, and I'll provide the butter ." The result would be that the William would not only butt every living soul on the picnic overboard, but finally got to wading into the surf and sinking any boat that attempted to land.

He was a regular policeman's billy, and after awhile they got to calling his beat Goat Island, which became the terror of mariners, and was even marked in red on the Coast Survey as

"SPECIALLY DANGEROUS."

They tell a story of old Commodore Maury, whose frigate, the Benicia, was run into by an Oakland ferryboat, one very foggy night, while a dinner party was being given on board. The Commodore picked himself up, rushed on deck in a towering passion and shouted, "All hands stand by for a broadside! There's that damned goat again !"

It is remarkable how our philanthropists and benevolent people generally go on year after year donating funds for the relief of all descriptions of unfortunate folks without ever once giving a thought to that most needy and miserable branch of our common species, the camper-out of the period.

At the urgent request of the Governor of the State, and the National Humane Society, we started out last week on a tour to the many different camping parties located near Santa Cruz, to obtain statistics, looking, if possible, to some comprehensive plan for the mitigation of their sufferings. The first place visited was near the Big Trees, where a party of San Franciscans, chiefly from the vicinity of Van Ness avenue, are heroically enduring a backwoods existence, somewhat alleviated by fresh milk from their own cow. This animal, which was tethered to a tree near the camp, made conversation in the vicinity somewhat of a luxury, through its habit of lowing uninterruptedly for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, an excess of lacteal harmony partially condoned by the fact that the animal acted as a sort of fog-horn to guide spoony couples back to the camp on moonless nights. This "outfit" consisted of sixteen souls, all much emaciated by a steady diet of hoecakes, fried ham and canned vegetables. The poor creatures made a desperate effort to seem contented with their lot, and even strove to crack some ghastly jokes on the subject, but the 174 171 ravenous, not to say wolfish, manner in which they gazed at the first-class

CIVILIZED LUNCH,

Produced and devoured by the writer's party, would have softened the hardest heart.

During our visit, the usual regular morning quarrel as to whose turn it was to cut firewood for the next meal took place. This singular daily observance of the campers' species was conducted with great vim and bitterness, and lasted over two hours, although three is the schedule limit.

It is amid the modern camping party that cookery of the cook-book variety has full sweep in the terrible work of destruction. There is always, we are naively assured by the fair promoters of such schemes, a certain Miss Smith, or Jones, who is celebrated for her muffins, or who is sure of a lofty niche in the temple of fame in consequence of some particularly gorgeous brand of sponge-cake brewed by her. In fact, all the young females implicated in these nefarious plots against the comfort and well-being of the commonwealth have some particular dish they are supposed to manufacture with peculiar skill. The result is that the mortality of these mutual misery associations is something enormous, and which is, doubtless, the reason they are so popular with the coroners of the cow counties. At the before-mentioned camp, for illustration, we met a friend, who, only two short months ago, was one of the most promising young lawyers of Sacramento. As we gazed upon the cadaverous figure, broken down by a severe course of fried beefsteak and burnt coffee, we could scarcely recognize our stalwart young jurist of yesterday. Taking our arm, with feeble steps he led us to a retired spot in the grove. There, in broken accents, he explained that his fiancee was one of his party, and that she had a mania for making biscuits with saleratus. Producing what appeared to be a circular piece of yellow adamant from his pocket, he exhibited a sample. Hard tack was as a cream-puff compared to it.

"I have been living on this sort of thing for twenty-one days," said the victim. "I feel I have not long to tarry. Another week will finish me. Tell them all that I died 175 172 resigned, and have my name carved on one of these biscuits for a headstone," and he sobbed convulsively as he confided to us his will and a few last messages to his friends. It was with a heavy heart that we drove off, and left the poor wretch to his fate.

AT CAMP FELTON,

A few miles further, we came upon another heartrending scene of distress. Here a party of some forty well-known San Francisco society people were having an alleged good time on the banks of a creek, the surface of which was resplendent with pond-lilies and tomato-cans. The pine twigs, that were used by them to serve in lieu of mattresses, had been gathered while wet with dew, we were informed; the result being that, say, thirty-five of the campers were limping around in the last stages of rheumatism and sciatica. With Spartan determination each had resolved not to be the first to give in, and heaven only knows what will become of these unfortunate people, unless their friends interfere and return them to civilization--by force of arms, if necessary. It is a singular and altogether notable fact that the modern camping party is the only place where women are induced to forego their natural vanity. A girl who would rather be guilty of all the crimes in the calendar than achieve a single freckle under ordinary circumstances, will consent to brown her arms to a Digger-Indian hue, and calmly see the skin peel from her nose, while camping out. At the Felton camp one such remarkable specimen of womanhood regaled us with a blood-curdling account of a wild man of the woods that infested the forest thereabouts, and which had developed a hospitable habit of prowling around the camp at night and uttering dismal cries, indicative of a gloomy desire to lunch on the fattest young lady of the party.

The fact that these so-called wild men are greatly on the increase in this part of the country has been widely commented on by the newspapers--as though there were anything strange about their origin. Every confirmed camper-out will recall numerous instances when certain members of his company have mysteriously disappeared from among their fellow lunatics. These deserters do not

SNEAK OFF HOME,

As is commonly supposed by the others. A long course of scorched beans, water-carrying, of wood-ticks and tarantulas has undermined their intellects and caused them to relaspe into the native barbarism of our quadrumanal forefathers. They stand it as long as possible, and then incontinently take to the woods and live on raw jack-rabbits and good scenery. There are doubtless thousands of just such miserable beings in the vicinity, and the Santa Cruz county authoirities are beginning to consider the advisability of putting a price upon the scalps of these woodland waifs in order to protect the local hen-roosts and the still greater industry of this section, which is the leasing of camping grounds. It is a small and one-horse ranch in in these parts on which the farmer does not advertise a camping ground to let for the season, supplied with all the modern conveniences--to wit, fresh water and alleged fishing and hunting facilities. One camp we visited disclosed about twenty-five of its inmates solemnly angling in a stream that looked as though it had been made by upsetting a wash-tub. They had pursued this pastime steadily for eleven days, with an aggregate result of three three-inch trout. To this purpose was devoted probably $2,000 worth of fine tackle. Every other able-bodied man about the camp was engaged in lugging expensive shooting outfits and $75 nickel-plated Winchesters over the country in search of a mythical grizzly bear, whose trail had been discovered about six miles from camp. It was only after two week's industrious shinning up the sun-baked can˜ons that the tracks were discovered to be those of an old darkey squatter, who was accustomed to go

HUNTING COTTONTAILS

In his bare feet.

It is a notable medical fact that the disease known as punning is apt to break out with fatal violence amid camping parties. There was never yet an expedition of the kind that did not number at least one of these excruciatingly funny fellows, who keep up a running fire of the most far-fetched plays upon words, as well as a monotonous repetition of the most obvious 177 174 ones. The fellow, for instance, who purposely comes in late to dinner in order to say "That's fowl," when he finds the chicken is all gone, and upon the slightest further provocation will add that to the best of his belief there is a good deal of chicanery round there somewhere. These are the fiends that perpetrate conundrums regarding the boiled beef, and choke down your ham and eggs with some joke used by Noah on the ark.

We went camping-out ourselves once. It is a degrading confession, but youth and inexperience ought to count for something in mitigation. There was one of this variety of human nuisance in the party, and the solid torture he inflicted on our fellow martyrs it is impossible to express. One day the writer was cleaning a shotgun. It went off accidentally, and the punnist fell as dead as one of his own jokes. The Coroner's jury brought in a verdict of accidental death, but, all the same, we can never forget the genuine emotion and heartfelt gratitude with which the rest of the party gathered the day after the funeral and presented us with a gold-headed cane. It was a simple testimonial of friendly esteem, the spokesman pathetically remarked, and not a syllable was said about the deceased; but, for all that, everyone understood the true significance of the gift in all its tender and suggestive beauty. Any one who doubts this story can see the cane in the beautiful collection exhibited in the cabinet of

UNCLE MOSES,

On Kearny Street.

It is a mistake, however, to suppose that a first square experience at camping out effectually cures the patient of the practice; in fact, this degrading habit resembles that of opium-eating in its terrible hold upon the inhuman mind when once it is begun. We remember the sad case of a young man who, by dissipation and evil company, fell so low as to commit a burglary. He was sent to San Quentin for six years. His youth, intelligence and apparent sincere reformation enlisted the sympathy of some influential people who heard his sad story while being shown through the penitentiary by this prisoner in the character of a "trusty." By dint of nagging Governor Perkins to the last extremity of nervous exasperation, the 178 175 visitors finally secured the youth's pardon, and sent him on his way covered with gratitude and store clothes. At Camp Skidmore, another rendezvous of mentally incapacitated persons, some miles south of here, we discovered a man lying face down in a hammock, smoking a cigarette and languidly endeavoring to split kindling wood on the ground beneath him. Riding up to this model of shiftlessness, we recognized the features of the ex-convict. Then, indeed, we realized the hopelessness of attempting to reform such a man. If he is not again under the charge of the amiable Judge Ames before another six months, we miss our guess.

CAMP CAPITOLA,

A sort of half town, half camping place, located on the beach not far from this resort of the saline summerer, was the last place visited to date. The inhabitants of the semi-shed, semitent edifices there approach more nearly to the grade of natural beings. They go in surf-bathing three times a day, and exist chiefly on fish and love. In the latter respect the settlement bore a vivid resemblance to the orthodox camp-meeting. At the time of our arrival the entire congregation under forty were out blackberrying, a suspicious fact of itself. Speaking of camp-meetings, one involuntarily recalls the famous message to the Legislature by Governor Foote, of North Carolina, who, in the gravest manner, recommended the early passage of acts rendering the frying of beefsteaks a penal offense, and prohibiting the "holding of camp-meetings, and other immoral assemblages." We vividly remember a colored camp-meeting held inside the Union lines in Virginia, not long before the fall of Richmond. There were nearly six thousand darkies present, and anything more grandly harmonious, more thrillingly, appealingly heart-moving than this vast chorus, singing in perfect time, such melodies as "One More River to Cross," and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," we, at least, never heard before. During the interminable sermon that was delivered by a renowned saddle-tinted divine, a rebel aeronaut passed over the grounds high in air. Just as the discourse got to "eleventhly," the balloonist threw over a sand bag, which dropped on the preacher's head, and

BROKE HIS NECK.

The other pulpit orators present gravely accepted the incident as a heavenly admonition against longwindedness, and thereafter took pains to stop at "tenthly," and some of them got ready to dodge even at that.

As we were saying about Camp Capitola--but, why linger further on these painful, these revolting details? The question is, What are we going to do about it? It is all very well to say that when an adult person in sound mental condition deliberately becomes a camper-out from choice, that he has forfeited all claim to the recognition and sympathy of his fellow men. This cold, uncharitable doctrine may be just; we do not deny that it is, but for that reason should we neglect to temper justice with mercy? Let him who has never at some time felt an insane desire to sleep three under a thin blanket and get ants in his hair, cast the first stone. Something has got to be done, and that quickly. Some general and comprehensive action must be taken by the whole people on this momentous question. Heaven knows, we are no idle alarmist, but the camping-out epidemic has been gaining headway with frightful rapidity of late, and there is no knowing when whole communities will become infected by the dread contagion. Congress ought to exert itself, and State Legislatures everywhere enact prohibitory and restrictive laws without delay. What we suggest is the immediate establishment of a sort of Campers' Quarantine ground near every large city, in which the projectors of such expeditions can be confined until their fatal delusion is dissipated. What prominent citizen will be the first to call a mass meeting to organize this great and beneficient movement? Who will take the lead in this noble effort to help and redeem those infatuated and pitiable people, the

CAMPERS-OUT OF THE PERIOD?

Meanwhile, subscriptions, to be devoted indirectly to this magnificent scheme, can be sent to this office, carefully sealed from observation marked "private," and directed to Derrick Dodd. They will be carefully invested where they will do the most good.