After Leaving The Foot-Hills For
Good, I Walked Ten Miles Before Reaching A Tree, Or Anything That Cast A
Shadow, If You Except The Telephone Poles.
For the first time I realized
there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the
shade of the telephone poles as a possibility!
Fortunately a light
breeze sprang up - the fag end of the trade wind - and, though hot, it
served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry
weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one
hundred miles due north of Stockton - of course, much farther by rail -
and the same arid, treeless, inhospitable belt of country between the
cultivated area and the foot-hills apparently extends the whole
distance. It is a country to avoid.
About two miles short of Marysville, while enjoying the shade cast by
the trees that border the levee of the Feather River, which skirts
Marysville to the south, a man in an auto stopped and very kindly
offered to give me a lift. I thanked him politely but declined. He
seemed amazed. "Why don't you ride when you can?" he asked. "Because I
prefer to walk," I answered. This fairly staggered him. The idea of a
man preferring to walk, and in such heat, was probably a novel
experience, and served to deprive him of further speech. He simply sat
and stared and I had passed him some twenty yards before he started his
machine.
A sturdy tramp walking in the middle of the road, who had witnessed the
scene, shouted as he passed:
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