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The sun is setting, and the golden mist which we left hanging over the city like a soft bright canopy, is creeping after us when we reach Vallejo, and take our places in the train for Virginia City. Our friends, the Israelitish commis voyageurs, have dispersed, and in their place we have tall, bearded men, with their wives. They are, one and all, without a single exception, talking stocks.

Early the next morning we leave the sleeper, and, after depositing our bags and shawl straps with the baggage master at Reno, start empty handed for Virginia City. During the night we have come through the ever green Sacramento Valley, but now we strike northward, straight up into the Sierras. All vegetation, except an occasional patch of yellow tar-weed, is left far below us. The great mountain slopes, bare and brown as we near them, but softly purple in the distance, and the clear brilliant blue of the summer sky, are all that we see. The road, twisting and turning as the ascent grows ever steeper, lies so close along the mountain side that at times it seems as if nothing but a miracle could keep us from plunging into the valley, many hundred feet below. Now and then we rush past deserted villages, where the frail, shell-like wooden shanties are already falling into decay. Again, we stop at the station of some small hamlet-city by courtesy perched on the bare hillside, and composed of half a dozen miner's huts, an equal number of saloons and billiard-rooms, and the railroad station."

** *

At last Virginia City is reached, built on the side of a hill, and looking, in spite of its large houses, "as if a very slight push would send it reeling into the valley." The party, after the usual California lunch of mutton-stew and pork-andbeans, proceeded to the mine.

"Following our guide, we entered a large building filled with rapidly revolving wheels of every size, some of which are used to work the elevator running constantly up and down the main shaft; while others move the immense pump which forces the cool air from above into the mine.

"Each of us having been provided with a bundle of rough-looking garments, we are ushered into the ladies' dressing room.”

Then comes a

At last the party are properly equipped and begin the descent. "At first I can do nothing but grasp my companion's arm. sensation of floating, but upward, not downward, and it is not until I see by the light of the lanterns that we are passing passage after passage cut in the granite

California and San Francisco.

37

walls, and each one lower than the last, that I fully realize the fact that every moment is bringing us nearer the center of the earth. Almost before I have collected my senses, we stop at the mouth of a large cavern, and I hear W's voice sounding as if many miles away, so deaf have I become by the sudden change of atmosphere, at 1,750 feet below Virginia City.

"From several points run narrow arched passages furnished each with a

railway on which the ore-cars are brought to the elevator, and into one of these black openings we plunge. On and on, through the heat and darkness, now slipping as we step by chance on iron rails, now passing a huge pipe connected with the air pump, now standing close against the shining, dripping walls, to let pass a low, heavy car loaded with ore, and pushed by a couple of miners; then

on again, until we come to a small circular cave, the walls composed of heavy beams of timber closely packed together, but bent in more than one spot by the tremendous pressure from above. Some of the richest ore has been found here; and a little farther on we come upon a group of men at work. There is a small pool of water to be crossed by means of a narrow plank, and then, one, two, three ladders to be climbed, the heat becoming more intense at every step, until we reach a niche-like opening where two men are at workrather, where one man works for a quarter of an hour, while the other sits with his arms in a pail of ice-water.

- or,

"The descent of those frightful ladders is, if possible, more perilous than the ascent. We follow our guides up one passage and down another, till a heavy curtain, which hangs from wall to wall, is pushed aside, and a hot blast seems to scorch our very bones. From that moment each step is one of increasing agony. I feel as if the whole seventeen hundred and fifty feet of earth above me were resting on my chest; my blood, which seems on fire, is driven violently to my head, and as each fresh wave of heat passes over us I gasp painfully for breath. The next ten minutes will always be a haunting memory to me. The long, dark passages, the burning atmosphere, the scattered lights, the weird figures of the miners, appearing only to vanish the next moment in the surrounding gloom, all recur like some terrible dream. After thanking our guide, we get on the elevator and, warmly enveloped in pea-jackets, return once more to the upper air."

* * *

ALBERT: The great wealth of Nevada is in its silver mines. The famous Comstock lode is partly beneath Virginia City.

THE PRESIDENT: I see that we have a sketch of Silver City, which might be, by its looks, the scene of several of Bret Harte's stories-" Smith's Pocket," for instance. I know no better way of familiarizing oneself with the peculiarities of this wonderful section of our country than by reading Bret Harte. Take, for instance, his graphic description of a snow-bound party in the Sierras in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." This is suggested to me by the picture before me of Talulowehack Cañon. Imagine winter setting in suddenly, as it always does, in such a scene, and a party of outcasts snow-bound at the foot of one of those hills.

MR. GOLDUST: I have been so much interested that I ought not to refuse to contribute a little to the fund of entertainment. You all know that I have

lived twenty-five years and more in California. I went there in 1856, a poor man. I became interested in gold-mining, and have been rich and poor alternately on an