there was some truth in the story they tell of a band of these terrible insects having once attacked and killed a mule; and when they had eaten all the flesh several of the largest were seen sitting on the carcase picking their teeth with the ribs.

After leaving Sacramento, that terrible nuisance on the trains, the youth who sells books, fruit, &c. seemed to become more annoying than ever, I suppose because the weather was so hot. This dreadful bore on all American trains begins his persecutions and proceeds on his rounds as soon as the train starts. He first offers books, new and second-hand; if you say you do not want any, he at once throws two or three into your lap or down by your side, and begs you just to look at them. On his return from his journey through the cars, he sweeps them up again with an injured air, if you still do not want one. He then leaves you, but only to return in a few minutes with decayed pears, pea-nuts, apples, and peaches. When that round is completed you lie down perhaps in a corner for a doze, when suddenly his shrill voice yells in your ear, Figs, cigars, and chewing candy.' Indignantly you return to your seat, only to find he has made a stall of it by piling up his books and depositing his basket of pea-nuts in it. If you go to the smoking carriage for a quiet smoke, you encounter this young pedlar in all his glory, as the

smoking-car is the stronghold where he keeps his supplies, in sundry large chests, and where he can enjoy passages of arms and wordy warfare with the breakmen and rowdies of all sorts, who generally occupy the second-class cars. I have often wondered how people who cannot afford the high fares of firstclass and Pullman cars get through the long journey from New York to San Francisco, or vice versâ.

The second-class are the smoking-carriages; they are without carpets, the seats often without cushions, and not a place for a sick man or child to lie down, day or night, and no room for change of position. Crowded indiscriminately with whites, blacks, and Chinese, people of cultivated minds and habits have to herd with the vulgar and low mannered, and the journey altogether must be as near an approach to a seven days' purgatory as is possible.

The name of the Golden State 'is very appropriate to California: everything is golden-the light, the landscape, and the soil. The currency is in gold also, which is anything but pleasant. Paper-money for travellers has many advantages over coin, in being more easily carried, and affording fewer opportunities for robbery. Besides, with gold the loss is very great.

In the East, for an English note say of twenty pounds, you will receive nearly one hundred and twenty dollars in green-backs; in California, you will not receive for

it one hundred dollars in gold. And yet prices are just the same. It is very well to say you receive more value for your money, but you do not in fact; at all events, travellers do not. You pay the same number of dollars per day at the hotels in the West as in the East, and a dollar is a dollar in both places, no more and no less. Retail traders, and hotel and bar keepers are the people who chiefly gain by it-and their gains must be enormous.

It has appeared to me that throughout America the high rate of wages is merely nominal. As wages rise so do prices. The price of clothing in America is so high that persons accustomed to European prices would hardly believe what the cost of a coat or a pair of boots is. Yet if the Irish bog-trotter hears that he can get two dollars a day for his work in America, off he rushes to receive his high wages, without the slightest consideration of the still far higher price he will have to pay for his daily necessaries. No wonder the duty on imported articles of clothing is so enormous in America, for if it were not, I think everything would be obtained from Europe. As it is, smuggling has obtained quite a prominent place amongst the arts practised in the East.

But here we are at Stockton, which is my startingpoint for the Big Trees of Calaveras and the celebrated Yosemite Valley.