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The western slope of the Sierras was much more gradual in its descent than on the eastern side, the former reaching from the summit to the Valley of the Sacramento, about one hundred miles, while the ascent on the eastern side, from the leaving of Carson Valley, is about twenty-four miles.
"Bim" was a diminutive of Cherubim, a name bestowed by its present owner upon the wretched puppy that he had rescued from an abandoned emigrant wagon high up in the California Sierras, because like Cherubim and Seraphim he "continually did cry." The little one was nearly dead, and its mother, lying beside it, was quite so, when they were discovered by the tender-hearted engineer.
In a few moments another steamer appeared in view and speedily entered the dock. The gates of the ferry house were opened and we went on board at once. Most of the passengers at this early hour were those who had come across the Sierras, but there were a few persons from Oakland going over to their places of business in San Francisco.
It was the hour to fulfill the purpose of the long, terrible journey across the plains, to carry out the original intention to descend from the Sierras to the golden valleys, to follow the struggle. "Reckon it's time to be moving," he told his wife. But now his own great labours asserted their claim.
He set us such an example of zeal and activity, that though we might not altogether have approved, yet we were bound to admire it. It is the fourth day of our voyage, and we are in sight of the high land of the Torres Vedras, at the mouth of the Tagus. Far, far away in the background, like a magnificent panorama, rise the high, time-worn summits of the Sierras of Spain.
In that an individual is an unsalaried editor, extensive or expensive trips are unthinkable; that his calling affords necessities but a scant allowance of luxuries, leaves recreation in the Sierras out of the question; but that by the accidents of politics he happens to be a supervisor, certain privileges, disguised attractively as duties, prove too alluring to resist.
After the battle of Anaquito the head of the viceroy was cut off by a Negro, and during the great earthquake in Guatemala a most remarkable figure was a gigantic Negro seen in various parts of the city. Nunez had thirty Negroes with him on the top of the Sierras, and there was rumor of an aboriginal tribe of Negroes in South America.
Where it lies, how to come at it, you will not get from me; rather would I show you the heron's nest in the tulares. It has a peak behind it, glinting above the tamarack pines, above a breaker of ruddy hills that have a long slope valley-wards and the shoreward steep of waves toward the Sierras.
Our remote but glorious land between the Sierras and the sea may then become as busy a hive as New England itself, and the whole continent must take fresh life from the generous blood of this natural and necessary commerce between people of different climates and zones. But these developments of power and trade are the least of the advantages we may hopefully expect.
Under pretence of accepting the challenge, the Great Spirit set the offenders to wander through the desert until they reached a valley in the Sierras, opposite Tehachapi, where he caused them to be exterminated by a horde of savages from the Mojave desert.
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