St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1892-08-18

fTa1l, Its DaSe SltHuSI DuliuiHS >OiHS
fifteen feet high, not half covered
with boards even, braced here and
there with a bit of board or light
stuff nailed on. A gale, ordinary for
the Atlantic coast, would speedily
make kite of the whole contrivance.
The breezes on these nights are
seldom too strong for comfort.
Tents are safe, and board shanties,
in which people pass even the winter
months. We found the air soft,
though bracing. Only in the evening
was an extra coat needed, as indeed
it usually is out of doors in California
generally, SO far as have known it.
By day, as | suppose on all these
cloudless summer days, the temper
allure of the tents was above human
endurance.
If the views from the trails and
from the camp are not magnificent
beyond everything we ever saw, even
in the Alps, at least none of US could
recall anything superior, except in
what water contributes to a land
scape. Take away brooks and
waterfalls, and lakes, and rainy days,
and cloudy skies, and cloud shadows
chasing one another over the noun
tain sides, with perhaps vast snow
fields and glaciers, and the remainder
must be magnificent indeed to leave
no painful sense of loss. But for
rock -hewn ways, zigzagging back
and forth along the steep precipices !;
narrow paths, with but six inches
between the mules foot and a fall
bottomless because it ends in eterni-
ty; abrupt turnings, where one may
be suddenly confronted by traveller
bound the other way, and no room
to pass; dark canyons coming into
view in succession, with sides of
sheer rock, or covered with chapparal;
and enchanting views, far below, of
orchards, vineyards, fields of corn
and alfalfa; and the streets and
houses of several towns and cities
spread out like a map-and all with
in three or four hours ride of home =
the world can hardly afford any
thing to compare with this noun
tain trip.
In the evening we watched for the
electric lights in Los Angeles and
Pasadena. They were turned on at
eight O'Clock, forty-two in Pasadena
and several times that in Los Angeles.
They glowed like lrefies impaled,
| like consultations in a lower sky.
They twinkled as the fixed stars do,
and for the same reason. They flash
ed in the colors Of the rainbow, as
Sirius does, and for the same reason.
The Los Angeles lights seemed hard
ly fainter; their greater distance but
IL c+D To-
In the morning all below us was
shut from view by blanket of fog,
that lay midway between US and the
surface of the earth. 1t was not a
| low fog, that obscured to the people
of Pasadena objects on their level,
but two thousand feet above their
| heads. To US it looked like light
snow, resting upon huge ice-cakes
frozen together and smoothing their
outlines, a frozen sea, stretching
without visible limit far out over the
Pacific, its surface pierced only by
the lofty peaks of Temescal and San
Jacinto, the latter capped with literal
snow. Not till near midday did the
fog clear away and reveal again
what was below. Los Angeles,
twenty miles distant, could be bare
| ly made out. Pasadena was near
enough for us to discern many of its
principal streets and buildings, trace
the moving railway trains and hear
their whistle
The new trail has its switch.
backs" like the ascent of the
Montanvert, though amid smaller
trees, that are not chestnuts; and
the resemblance is assisted by the
halfway shanty for cakes and small
beer, as well as by the mule process
sion. These surveyors stakes every
half chains length remind us that
the trail is to be widened to a car
riage road. The conundrum of the
mules break into a trot of his owl
accord, when he long demonstrated
against taking this line at the start
because it led him away from home
answered by a substitute corral,
with it's food, drink and rest, which re
ceives him at the finish. Here,-at the
canyons mouth, whence issues {
great iron pipe, which has gathered
the trucking mountain water tha1
explains the difference between thes'
green fields and the surrounding
desert-here ends the tale as we'll a.
the trail. Sincerely yours,
H. w. ].
Pasadena, Cal, Aug. 8, 1892.
ABRAHAM LINCoLN's GENIUS Fol