New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-11-20
TRUCKER.

a city of John Chinaman with an appanage OF lrish
shanteS the inevitable SALOONS" avery comfortable
railroad hotel and certain thriving marts OF infinite
varieties. There were long streets of Chinese laun-
dries BARRIERS shops tea stores peanut stands, and
nondescrpt booths, all like as two peas externally
little wooden barracks ten feet square, and adorned
with big sign boards, persuasive, no doubt, to the
Celestial mind, but impenetTable to us. we saw the
thrifty creatures eating their rice with chop-slcks
chattering to each other like magpies In words that
seemed all conSOnants, or plying their various aVO
cations. They did not think our coaches worth the
trouble of staring at and accepted our stares as
modest tribute to their elder civilization. The
Truckee American and exc the 1ruckee Irishman
thronged to the station to see their welcome wee
President and viewed him with absorbing and by no
means silent interest as in some sort possession OF
their own, albert perishabe and not to be roughly
handled But the Truckee Chinaman recalled the
wisdom of Chez, to sit in silence and recall past
ideas to feel no anxety-this is ability" and
pounded his wash, indifferent. When our special
engine and one car were ready, the Central Pacific
officers having sent that pleasant conveyance down
for Mr. Colfax, the whistle shrieked sortof Boot
and Saddle" and we were Off putting up the last rise
of the mountains to Summit to tear down on the other
side.
1t is q most wonderful ride. but the sun hung
in mid heaven now, and, as at Tahoe, this mountain
scenery at is only big, not grand Our Eastern
eyes would never be recOnciled to these vast domes
of cloudless blue to these hard miles and miles and
| miles without shadow. And these enormous
canons, these heaped-up and countless mountains,
these gorges and precpices on whose dizzy verge we
hung, seemed always to me, though my mind ac-
cepted their wonder and terror and stupendousness,
less grand, less majestic even than the familiar
FrancOna and White Mountains, which are but hills
| in the comparison. Because the brooding shadows
and purple lights that forever brood upon our North
ern nights give them that element of mystery and
unattainable beauty that is so dear an attribute OF
the sublime, while here all is confessed, and so,
profaned. There sacred silences, no hiding
places of the gods. So, at sunset and sunrise
could not love the Sierras, though l knew how
much they should command me by reason OF their
immensely. However l might have hoped with
Slender that If there great love IN the begin
ming, Heaven might decrease it on better acquant-
ance, the railroad company gave travellers and land
scape little chance to come to understanding For
the dreadful snow-sheds, which are wooden tunnels,
built of stoutest timbers, abutting the mountain
on the one side, and nailed to staunch uprights
the other beetle over the cliffs for miles and miles of
widest scenery, with crack to peep through.
| What with them and the rock tunnels we had gen
| eral sense of being swung round and round as one
swings an apple pairing ones head for shut up in
those wooden galleries. we could only see that
the sun shOne first sde and then on the other,
| now in front, and now behind. SnatChing what
| views we could wherever the snOw-sheds had the
! grace to disjont themselves for mile or two we
found that the track was as daring the stageroad
had been. and very like it, except that it seemed TO
climb even higher and TO leave less for turning
summersaults on if it should feel thus frolic
somey inclined. When we gazed shuddering down
a mile of precipice, which the engine looked clean
over to if grim Death were waiting at the bottom
and to say with whistle that it couldn't call to-day
we comfOrted ourselves with thinking that the
frosty churl just securely established on that
great rock only twenty feet down from a sudden
level that we came upon, and that a few hundred
wards of tumble more less could MT signify. 1t
was curious in these cessaons of snowshed, TO look
up the very crest of opposite and near mountain
and see your track winding up and up to turn again
| aud come back on the same side whence you gazed
and 80 wind and turn and struggle with the grade
till at last it gets the best of it, and comes down the
slopes still zig-zagging, but taking courage, and
making fewer concessions than one would suppose
inevitable. Our thoughtful host determined that we
should have glimpse of Bonner Lake, he saw it
from the stage-road four years ago, had the car
stopped. and we all clambered down to behold
lovely sheet of water gittering in the sunshine far
below us. and still as if we were it's discoverers So
despite the nIggardliness Of the corporation, did
have some mama of heaven in the wilderness But
what shall be done about the snow-shedsi Shall an
outraged public stop train some Summer morning
and fire them regardless. outraged pHblcs always
are of those who shall come after not itself intend
ing to cross the inhosptable mountains under Winter
skies Or will the Management, warned in season
by this distant thunder avoid the gathering tempest
hinge a board OF two all the way along and possibly
receive a silver cup in token of worlds gratitudei
Presently we were out of the mountains, running
over parched plains, all covered with what looked at
first like the few forgotten and unreaped spears of
Summers teeming harvest. Bat, looking closer, we
saw that it was a ght-brown seeded grass, thickset
and strong and heard not only that the sandhills
of California clothed themselves with vineyards and
gave for the largess of little water now and then,
frutage richer than EshcOl's, but that the fields
kindly did all their own haying and gathering into
barns the intense and long, dry days perfectly
curing the grass in the STEM and drying so many
seeds at the time to make this fodder rich
gram while it may safely be left of DOORS since
the very first rain starts the CROP which grows
like Jacks bean-staIk, and nothing else in botany
that ever heard of. There great groves of what
they call here live oak, with n pointed leaf
and general look of big and independent minded
apple-tree And there are cOttOn-woOds. No old
friends nod and beckon anywhere no elms, nor
naples, nor larches and if they did it would only
make us miserable that We could not get out and
give them bath, so loaded down and dishgured and
pale with dust would they stand. We cross the deep
dry red beds of streams, that in Spring are turbu-
lent torrents drowning whole towns sometimes. We
pass hills and gulches where notwithstanding has
made queer-loodng dwarf-tunnes and ruins Then
in the Sacramento River, see whatlooks like half
the wise men of China gone to sea in bowls 1t is a
feet of tubs, and the laundry-men are doing enor-