where the yucca palm is plentiful.  A fellow passenger, and old settler, enlivened the time by some relations of his experiences thus:  He once shot a grizzly bear which weighed 1,500 lbs.  Some are much larger than this.  Everything of weight in America is generally reckoned by pounds, not cwts. or tons.  On another occasion he slew a Californian lion.  He had killed a bullock, and the carcase was hanging in his house at the back, where was an aperture like a small window without glass, and under this opening outside stood an empty case.  The lion scenting the carcase, and hearing no sound from within, approached the house, and was endeavouring to creep through the aperture when, in its efforts to do so, it kicked the case away, and the poor animal was stuck fast, having its head and shoulders inside.  My fellow traveller, on returning home, was surprised to find his visitor, and so despatched him with an axe, and has for years used the skin, which is 9 feet 8 inches long.  The temperature was charming, although in the distance we could see the snow-capped mountains.  We run through the antelope valley, gather some juniper plant, see a skunk, see natural oil wells at Saugus, pass the head of the Santa Clara Valley, see the San Fernando mountains, go through the greatest tunnel in America—­the San Fernando tunnel, 6,967 feet long, go by Burbank, where there is a land boom, and arrive at Los Angeles, where during the two hours of waiting I have a look at the town and a pleasant chat with Mr. White Mortimer, the British Consul, whom I called upon.  The next day (December 18th) we were on the desert of Arizona, where we saw Indian camps at places which were somewhat oases as to plant life.  Speaking generally, nothing grows on a great part of this desert but cactus, of which I am told there are some 200 varieties, from the dwarf kind to trees 40 feet high.  This plant has a strange if not a weird appearance.  Here and there, like solitary sentinels, stands out a tall cactus, with perhaps two or three heads or branches, growing perpendicularly with itself.  The mountains on either side look as if they had their origin in volcanic eruptions.

Some parts of the desert are covered with a dwarf kind of evergreen shrub.  We see large numbers of prairie dogs, which are of a size between a rat and a rabbit; they live in holes like rabbits.  There are also gophers, skunks, prairie rats, rattlesnakes, and hawks, which feed on snakes and rats.  We pass tribes of Yuma Indians, Aztec Indians and Gila (pronounced Heela) Indians.  On reaching a part where is some grass we see some cattle, which are straying on the line; the engine whistle shrieks, the cattle run, and some coyote wolves are startled from their lairs and run, too; large numbers are here, and the preceding night their yells aroused some passengers from sleep.  As we proceed, quail are seen, and wild cats something like a lynx.  Arriving at Tucson (pronounced Tewsohn), I enquired for a gentleman to