Here is every arrangement conceivable for entertainment; on one side the Pacific ocean; on the other the Coast Range Mountains, a very pleasant resort for the very rich; but we found there at this time more servants than guests.

The town of Monterey is interesting only for its ruins of ancient monasteries and convents, where a few lazy half-breeds alone remain to tell the tale of multitudes over whom the Catholic priests reigned supreme, reducing their dupes to beggary by their extortions.  Once these mountains were covered with vast flocks of sheep, but the foolish reduction of the tariff on wool by the Wilson bill, destroyed all profits, and the flocks disappeared into the hungry mouths of the people.

Thence the iron horse took us back to ’Frisco, and we sailed all day and all night to Sacramento.  The scenery was grand, but the cold weather chilled us to the very bones.  Islands of old red sandstone loom like sentinels along the coast, covered with lighthouses to warn the mariners.  The twin peaks of Montepueblo covered with perpetual snow, seemed to support the heavens as do the pillars the dome of the capitol.

Swarms of screaming sea gulls fill the air, some of which, benumbed by cold alighted on the steamer’s deck.  Lonely ranches are seen, hemmed in by the everlasting hills.

Our great, lazy boat, propelled by a stern wheel as big as a barn, paddled slowly over the muddy waters of the great Sacramento River, made yellow by the turbid waters sent to it from scores of hydraulic mines on the mountains.  On one island is an immense smelting furnace, the tall chimneys of which send forth volumes of poisonous smoke, dangerous to breathe, and covering everything with a coating black as soot.  Inhaling this, some of the operators die of lead poisoning.  Many islands are here scarcely above the water’s edge, having little houses built on stilts occupied by the salmon fishers who are seen pulling their nets, and around whose heads whirl and scream flocks of fish hawks, ravenous for their prey.

After a successful book fight at the capital city, I went to Red Bluff where I was broiled and roasted in a day and night temperature of a hundred and twelve degrees in the shade.  I survived only by keeping my head wrapped in ice water; I could neither eat nor sleep, and like Dickens, I longed to “take off my flesh, and sit in my bones.”  It was a veritable hell on earth.

The county superintendent of schools here, told me he sold his prune crop that year for five thousand dollars, and went away leaving the purchaser to pick the fruit.  On his return, he found that the red spiders had anticipated the pickers, and destroyed the entire crop, so that his work of years came to naught, as the buyers of course refused to pay to feed the spiders.

Thence I went to San Luis Obispo, and on the way we struck the Coast Range Mountains.  The tortuous upclimbing and downsliding of the train disclosed scenery imposing and grand.  You looked down the precipitous rock-ribbed sides thousands of feet to the narrow, beautiful valleys, made productive by the irrigation from many foaming waterfalls.  We circle the mountains many times before reaching the valleys, traveling many hours to gain a straight-line mile.