CHAPTER VIII.

STOCKTON TO THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.

Stockton-Dust-Gophers -Quails-Staging-Tarantulas-Hydraulic mining-Mammoth trees-A curious flower—A theory-Table Mountain-Deserted villages-Chinese camp-Wine-The Siamese twinsManzanita-The summit.

I SHALL always look back on my visit to Stockton-the City of Windmills--with a pleasant remembrance of its beautiful gardens. All sweet-scented flowers seemed to grow there, and with a greater luxuriance than I had seen anywhere else.

Some of the gardens were a little unkempt and overluxuriant, like gardens to which the hired man comes once a week only, or tends in the intervals of knifecleaning and boot-blacking; but the houses were covered with roses, myrtles, and honeysuckles, which climbed to the very roofs, and every window was set in a frame of heliotrope and jessamine. The borders were all filled with Old World flowers, and numbers of our hot-house plants grew there as trees and bushes.

Stockton is neither a pretty nor a well-situated town, as it is on the borders of the tule-lands which are formed

by the overflow of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. Numbers of little channels, with long wooden bridges over them, run in all directions, at least, they run when there is any water in them, which is seldom. The outskirts of the town seem to be entirely under water, as the main channel winds all round them. There is, however, one beautiful view, that of Mount Diablo; miles away, but standing out boldly across the flat country, and the spectacle at sunset is worth at visit to Stockton to see.

I had the good fortune to meet there two American gentlemen-one of whom was an ex-colonel of the United States army-who kindly asked me to join them in their expedition to the Big Trees and the Valley. I gladly accepted their invitation, and most delightful and agreeable companions I found them. The Colonel was just as enthusiastic and as determined to see everything that was to be seen as he could have been when twenty years younger, and he had a fund of quiet humour, which entertained us as much as his knowledge of botany and other subjects instructed us.

A branch line of the railway took us to Milton, a small station about thirty miles from Stockton, and thenceforth our journey was by stage-coach. If you are so unfortunate as to be unable to obtain a box seat, staging in this part of the world is simply agony. From the moment you get on the coach till the time

you get off, you are in one perpetual cloud of thick yellow dust. Dust-coats, veils, &c. are useless, although you must wear them. Every halting-place has its supply of basins of water, and innumerable brushes to assist you in getting rid of some of the dust. But in less than two minutes after you start again, eyes, hair, mouth, ears, and clothes are once more filled with the penetrating sand, and you become irritable to a degree if you think about it and try to keep clean. It is better, therefore, to bear it stoically, and to become as begrimed and dirty as you possibly can at your earliest convenience. Our thirty miles' journey to Murphy's, where we were to remain for the night, was through a country, yellow of course, parched, and without much variety of scenery, but alive with squirrels and gophers. These pests to the farmers increase every year, and do almost as much damage to the crops as a flight of locusts. For every one that a farmer may destroy on his land, ten survive to avenge his death. Individual efforts to exterminate them have hitherto been ineffectual, and to get rid of them entirely, some general system will be necessary, which must be carried out fully and thoroughly, so as to leave no corner in which the enemy, once routed, can take refuge and recuperate. A gopher is like a small mole, and is even more destructive than a squirrel.

We saw many of the beautiful Californian quails,

dusting themselves in the road, and looking so 'game' with their erect feathery top-knots. These, and the black-and-white woodpeckers and small doves, are the principal birds found in these regions, and they make up by their numbers for the scarcity of other varieties. The only animals we saw were jackass-rabbits-thin gaunt-looking animals, with enormous ears, from which, I suppose, they derive their name.

Stage-driving in California is widely different from staging in other parts of the world. The drivers, as a rule, are quaint, clever, companiable men, and splendid whips. At first, the break-neck speed at which they always drive down-hill is rather appalling, but you soon get accustomed to it. To find yourself whirling down a very steep hill, along a narrow road, round sharp corners with a steep precipice on one side, and as fast as four and sometimes six horses can go, is so novel a sensation, so exciting, and so opposed to the usual steady down-hill sort of pace, that you cannot help cheering on the horses, in spite of a very probable upset on the brow of an almost perpendicular rock several hundred feet in height. The horses, too, seem to enjoy it, and I must say I attribute the absence of accidents as much to their knowingness and sure-footedness as to the certainly brilliant attainments of the 'knights of the whip.' Generally, each driver has some specialty of his own-for instance, one is well up in

botany; another knows something of natural history; and I remember one who knew the height of every mountain we saw, the length of every bridge we crossed, and the number of inhabitants in each village we passed through. His successor afterwards informed me, that he was of so statistical a turn that he had counted the hairs on his children's heads and pasted the number in their hats; but I am inclined to think that must have been an exaggeration.

Murphy's Camp is a quiet little mining town. Perhaps we found it quiet because we happened not to be there on a Saturday night, which is anything but a quiet night at most mining towns. It is then that the poor but honest miner' spends his week's earnings in liquor, and the village whisky-shops and bars are the scenes of one long round of general dissipation. Murphy's is a great place for tarantulas' nests; indeed, the chief business of the little village consists in the sale of these curiosities. The nest is composed of a house of clay, rough outside but polished in the interior, and having a little clay door swinging on a perfect hinge. If you look at this door carefully on the inside you will see two very small holes, and into these the tarantula, when at home, and an intruder wishes to open the door, sticks two of his hind legs, holding on at the same time to the other end of his room with his fore legs; by which means he makes it im