It was a warm day when he went down to take the stage for Mariposa.  The vehicle seemed to be already full of passengers, mostly Mexicans and Chinamen.  When the portly Bishop presented himself, and essayed to enter, there were frowns and expressions of dissatisfaction.

“Mucho malo!” exclaimed a dark-skinned Senorita, with flashing black eyes.

“Make room in there—­he’s got to go,” ordered the bluff stage-driver, in a peremptory tone.

There were already eight passengers inside, and the top of the coach was covered as thick as robins on a sumac-bush.  The Bishop mounted the step and surveyed the situation.  The seat assigned him was between two Mexican women, and as he sunk into the apparently insufficient space there was a look of consternation in their faces—­and I was not surprised at it.  But scrouging in, the newcomer smiled, and addressed first one and then another of his fellow-passengers with so much friendly pleasantness of manner that the frowns cleared away from their faces, even the stolid, phlegmatic Chinamen brightening up with the contagious good humor of the “big Mellican man.”  When the driver cracked his whip, and the spirited mustangs struck off in the California gallop —­the early Californians scorned any slower gait—­everybody was smiling.  Staging in California in those days was often an exciting business.  There were “opposition” lines on most of the thoroughfares, and the driving was furious and reckless in the extreme.  Accidents were strangely seldom when we consider the rate of speed, the nature of the roads, and the quantity of bad whisky consumed by most of the drivers.  Many of these drivers made it a practice to drink at every stopping-place.  Seventeen drinks were counted in one forenoon ride by one of these thirsty Jehus.  The racing between the rival stages was exciting enough.  Lashing the wiry little horses to full speed, there was but one thought, and that was, to “get in ahead.”  A driver named White upset his stage between Montezuma and Knight’s Ferry on the Stanislaus, breaking his right-leg above the knee.  Fortunately none of the passengers were seriously hurt, though some of them were a little bruised and frightened.  The stage was righted, White resumed the reins, whipped his horses into a run, and, with his broken limb hanging loose, ran into town ten minutes ahead of his rival, fainting as he was lifted from the seat.

“Old man Holden told me to go in ahead or smash everything, and I made it!” exclaimed White, with professional pride.

The Bishop was fortunate enough to escape with unbroken bones as he dashed from point to point over the California hills and valleys, though that heavy body of his was mightily shaken up on many occasions.

He came to California on his second visit, in 1863, when the war was raging.  An incident occurred that gave him a very emphatic reminder that those were troublous times.

He was at a camp-meeting in the San Joaquin Valley, near Linden—­a place famous for gatherings of this sort.  The Bishop was to preach at eleven o’clock, and a great crowd was there, full of high expectation.  A stranger drove up just before the hour of service—­a broad shouldered man in blue clothes, and wearing a glazed cap.  He asked to see Bishop Kavanaugh privately for a few moments.