During This Day We Ran Through Ranges Of Uneven Mountains, Rising One
Above Another In Broken Undulations And With Ever-Varying Tops, Such As
Table Lands, Sharp Conical Peaks, Rounded Heads, And Broken
Indentations.
The distant mountains are enveloped in snow, upon which gleams a
resplendent setting sun, presenting a prospect which only such a region
could produce.
From the dazzling whiteness of one range we look upon the
dense darkness of another, as being out of the sun's influence. The
lights and shades, the gorges, the fissures, the striations in the range
upon range, with their intervals of plains and valleys, here and there
opening up peeps of great tracts of country, and then again shutting
all in to the circumference of their gigantic heads, interspersed with
the brilliance of rich gold, tingeing some tops and revealing dark
recesses, some ruby tints and fantastic shadows, - all combine to reflect
a glory which lifts the mind beyond the great heights of hills to a
height, greater still, whence originated all natural grandeur.
We had run through Utah and Nevada, and were now approaching the
northern part of California. In the very early morning of December 6th I
awoke and found that the train was at a standstill. Thinking that we
were at a station I tried to sleep again, but, finding that we continued
motionless, I went out on to the platform connecting our car with the
next and found all around was deep snow, and that another train on the
other metals had broken down, and that our men were apparently helping
to get it off. We were then two miles from Truckee, and at an elevation
of nearly 6,000 feet. After a long delay we got away and ran into
Truckee. The scenery on this day was also of a truly grand character:
precipices, declivities, chasms; and in one very romantic spot, of weird
and wild mountain sides, graduating to narrow gullies, with pine and
other trees, some perfect, others broken by the wind was one great
wreck of a forest monster - a tree rudely snapped asunder by wind or
lightning, about 40 feet from the ground, and stripped of every branch,
so that it looked like a broken column; on its top sat a great vulture
in the well-known attitude of its kind, as motionless as rock, and
apparently meditating on the incongruity of a noisy, vulgar bit of
machinery, with its train of cars, invading such a nook of Nature's
solitudes.
As we proceeded we came upon the succession of Placer gold diggings,
known as the hydraulic mines, which were then for the most part
abandoned, and these brought to my remembrance many similar spots I had
seen in Australia. The debris of the mines had stopped up, or
diverted, or otherwise interfered with the Sacramento River, the Bear
River, and other rivers, to the great detriment of agriculture,
horticulture, stock rearing, etc., whereupon the State Legislature of
California passed an Act to prohibit all interference with the water,
for without water the miners could not wash their dirt, and so had to
abandon the diggings.
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