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In honor to the State that cherishes the landmark; in justice to history which is entitled to the truth; in sympathetic fellowship with those who survived the disaster; and in reverent memory of those who suffered and died in the snow-bound camps of the Sierra Nevadas, I refute the charges of cruelty, selfishness, and inhumanity which have been ascribed to the Donner Party.
Fed by the eternal snows of the Sierra Nevadas, with a fall of 2,442 feet between Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake, it affords a water power equalled by few rivers in the U. S. A. Its power plants now supply light and power for all near-by mines; Mason Valley, Youngton, Virginia City and the Comstock Lode; yet these power stations do not generate one-tenth of the power that could be obtained.
Our train was in three divisions and consisted of about twenty persons, and forty horses and mules. One morning in the middle of August we left our camp at the eastern base of the double summit of the Sierra Nevadas and began our ascent.
"This lifting the ocean up into the sky is upsetting the order of nature. I'd as soon expect to sight a cachalot on top of the Rocky Mountains." "They'll be there, too, before long," said Cosmo. "I wonder what he's looking for," continued Captain Arms. "He must have come down from the north. He couldn't have got in through the Pyrenees or the Sierra Nevadas.
Now we see Silver Lake, at the base of the Sierra Nevadas on the east side; our advance to the summit was not as difficult as we anticipated. Having arrived at this point we are at the source of the south fork of the American River and at the summit of the Sierra Nevadas. We now commenced the descent on a tributary of this river.
The other main peaks of the Sierra Nevadas exceed 13,000 feet in altitude. The peaks nearest Reno are: Mount Rose and Peavin Mountain, both of which can be seen from any part of the City of Reno. In this setting nestles our much-talked-of "Gem City of Nevada" the city of heart-throbs and dreams!
Accompanied by an assistant, Alan Hope, and on board a special car packed with $50,000 worth of apparatus he will proceed to Clarkeville, an insignificant town in New Mexico, from which place he will make his hazardous flight over the mountains lying to the north. The aerial journey may possibly extended over the Sierra Nevadas as far as the Pacific Coast.
Flowers, too, are here at our feet in abundance, forget-me-nots and other familiar varieties. The view from our position is remarkably fine, reminding me forcibly of the Balkans south of Nisch, and of the Californian slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, where they overlook the Sacramento Valley. The Asterabad Plain is spread out below us like a vast map.
We dismounted and drove the horses down a bridle-path which I think was fully as crooked as a corkscrew, which I know to be as steep as the downward sweep of a rainbow, and which I believe to be the worst piece of road in the geography, except one in the Sandwich Islands, which I remember painfully, and possibly one or two mountain trails in the Sierra Nevadas.
This war between the two religions began in the north near the Bay of Biscay whither the Christians were finally pushed by the invaders. Each century saw the Moors driven a little farther south toward the Mediterranean, until Granada, where the lovely Sierra Nevadas rise, was the last stronghold left them.
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