has a gorgeous place. His picture-gallery is worthy of a Rothschild.

* * * * *

We left San Francisco for Los Angeles; the directors of the road put
everything at our disposition as usual. We had a _salon_, bed, and
dressing-rooms in one car, and Miss Cadwalader and Miss Clymer had
similar ones in another. There were kitchen, dining and reading rooms
for the whole party, which had now grown to be sixteen in number,
Senator Conover and his wife and some officers going with General
Taylor to Fort Yuma having joined us.

We went to Santa Monica, which is the fashionable watering-place of
these parts. Here we drove on the beach, which is thirty miles long. A
gentleman of Los Angeles was attached to our party and showed us the
sights. We saw all kinds of ranches--orange, grape, and bee ranches.
Then we drove to a Mexican settlement, where they gave us a gorgeous
dinner, really worthy of more time than we could give it, for we had to
leave at five o'clock for Los Angeles, where we dined again.

The next day we started off on another tour. We drove through
twenty-five miles of banana, pineapple, pomegranate groves and
vineyards. We tasted all the wines and fruit-syrups, and drank native
port and champagne. We had a special train and arrived at Merced the
next morning, to start on our Yosemite Valley tour.


_May 20th._

Just our luck! The first rain for four months pours down to-day. We