Yuba, the travellers on the Rio Sacramento, and the citizens of the
Chrysopolis of the Pacific that "A. Ward" would be there shortly.
In California the lecture was advertised under its old name of "The
Babes in the Wood." Platt's Hall was selected for the scene of
operation, and, so popular was the lecturer, that on the first night
we took at the doors more than sixteen hundred dollars in gold. The
crowd proved too great to take money in the ordinary manner, and
hats were used for people to throw their dollars in. One hat broke
through at the crown. I doubt if we ever knew to a dollar how many
dollars it once contained.

California was duly travelled over, and "The Babes in the Wood"
listened to with laughter in its flourishing cities, its
mining-camps among the mountains, and its "new placers beside
gold-bedded rivers. While journeying through that strangely-
beautiful land, the serious question arose--What was to be done
next? After California--where?

Before leaving New York, it had been a favourite scheme of Artemus
Ward not to return from California to the East by way of Panama, but
to come home across the Plains, and to visit Salt Lake City by the
way. The difficulty that now presented itself was, that winter was
close upon us, and that it was no pleasant thing to cross the Sierra
Nevada and scale the Rocky Mountains with the thermometer far below
freezingpoint. Nor was poor Artemus even at that time a strong man.
My advice was to return to Panama, visit the West India Islands, and
come back to California in the spring, lecture again in San
Francisco, and then go on to the land of the Mormons. Artemus
doubted the feasibility of this plan, and the decision was
ultimately arrived at to try the journey to Salt Lake.