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The prospect of getting them all to the settlement, even under favorable circumstances, had seemed doubtful at the beginning of the journey. Alas, one of the heaviest snow-storms of the season overtook them on the bleak mountain-side ten miles from the tops of the Sierra Nevadas. It continued many days. Food gave out, death took toll.
This is discussed somewhat in a later chapter devoted to the subject. It may be interesting to recall that in 1900 Mr. He offered to construct this line, including a tunnel through the Sierra Nevadas, and deliver thirty million gallons of water daily, for $17,960,000. If a double line, or a hundred millions of gallons daily, were required, the price was to be correspondingly increased.
Some of our United States officers have tried to improve on the experience of the Greaser, and have made what they called an improvement on the Mexican pack-saddle. But all the attempts at improvement have been utter failures. The ranchero, on the Pacific side of the Sierra Nevadas, is also a good packer; and he can beat the Mexican lassoing cattle.
Long ago the Wasatch Range of eastern Utah and the Sierra Nevadas of California formed parts of a vast elevated plateau. Then there came a time when the forces holding up the plateau were relaxed, and as the weight of the plateau pressed it down, the solid rocks broke into huge fragments. Some of the blocks thus made sank and formed valleys; others were tilted or pushed up and formed mountains.
This continent was discovered and California was settled at the right time for the Sierra Nevadas to be seen in all their grandeur. Gold, and not scenery, was the object of their search. The great cañons were outside of the gold regions, and so inaccessibly situated that no one except the Indians looked upon them until 1851.
Mountains of this formation, as the Adirondacks and the Storm King range, overlooking the Hudson near West Point, are the patriarchs of their kind, beside which Alleghanies and Sierra Nevadas are recent upstarts, and Rockies, Alps, and Andes are mere parvenus of yesterday.
Mail service was known over the old Spanish or Mormon Trail, down the Virgin and to Los Angeles, at different times between 1850 and 1861. This service seems to have been as an alternative when the passes of the Sierra Nevadas were closed.
He was a man of charming personality and great literary ability. Some one said of him that he could make a more interesting story out of what he saw during a ride in a street car than most men could with the best material at their disposal. His "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevadas" was as interesting an account of Western exploration as has ever been published.
It was said that if a wall-eyed pack mule, carrying quartz in the Nevadas, showed a disposition to gallop and jump he would be in Ikey's stable in a fortnight, and, if he made good, at Dewhurst within six months. It was, of course, with the Walers that the little Levantine came nearest his desire. He imported them into the old country on a scale never before dreamed of.
Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.
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