State, whose well-shaded streets and blooming, almost tropical gardens
combine to form a city of quiet, dignified beauty, of which Californians
feel justly proud. Three and a half miles east of Sacramento, the high
trestle bridge spanning the main stream of the American River has to be
crossed, and from this bridge is obtained a remarkably fine view of the
snow-capped Sierras, the great barrier that separates the fertile valleys
and glorious climate of California, from the bleak and barren sage-brush
plains, rugged mountains, and forbidding wastes of sand and alkali, that,
from the summit of the Sierras, stretch away to the eastward for over a
thousand miles. The view from the American River bridge is grand and
imposing, encompassing the whole foot-hill country, which rolls in broken,
irregular billows of forest-crowned hill and charming vale, upward and
onward to the east, gradually getting more rugged, rocky, and immense,
the hills changing to mountains, the vales to ca¤ons, until they terminate
in bald, hoary peaks whose white rugged pinnacles seem to penetrate the
sky, and stand out in ghostly, shadowy outline against the azure depths
of space beyond.

After crossing the American River the character of the country changes,
and I enjoy a ten-mile ride over a fair road, through one of those
splendid sheep-ranches that are only found in California, and which have
long challenged the admiration of the world. Sixty thousand acres, I
am informed, is the extent of this pasture, all within one fence. The
soft, velvety greensward is half-shaded by the wide-spreading branches
of evergreen oaks that singly and in small groups are scattered at
irregular intervals from one end of the pasture to the other, giving it
the appearance of one of the old ancestral parks of England. As I bowl
pleasantly along I involuntarily look about me, half expecting to see
some grand, stately old mansion peeping from among some one of the
splendid oak-groves; and when a jack-rabbit hops out and halts at twenty