can get a great deal worse; and before getting far, I hear an approaching
train and forthwith proceed to occupy as small an amount of space as
possible against the side, while three laboriously puffing engines,
tugging a long, heavy freight train up the steep grade, go past. These
three puffing, smoke-emitting monsters fill every nook and corner of the
tunnel with dense smoke, which creates a darkness by the side of which
the natural darkness of the tunnel is daylight in comparison. Here is a
darkness that can be felt; I have to grope my way forward, inch by inch;
afraid to set my foot down until I have felt the place, for fear of
blundering into a culvert; at the same time never knowing whether there
is room, just where I am, to get out of the way of a train. A cyclometer
wouldn't have to exert itself much through here to keep tally of the
revolutions; for, besides advancing with extreme caution, I pause every
few steps to listen; as in the oppressive darkness and equally oppressive
silence the senses are so keenly on the alert that the gentle rattle of
the bicycle over the uneven surface seems to make a noise that would
prevent me hearing an approaching train. This finally comes to am end;
and at the opening in the sheds I climb up into a pine-tree to obtain
a view of Donner Lake, called the "Gem of the Sierras." It is a lovely
little lake, and amid the pines, and on its shores occurred one of the
most pathetically tragic events of the old emigrant days. Briefly related
: A small party of emigrants became snowed in while camped at the lake,
and when, toward spring, a rescuing party reached the spot, the last
survivor of the partly, crazed with the fearful suffering he had under-
gone, was sitting on a log, savagely gnawing away at a human arm, the
last remnant of his companions in misery, off whose emaciated carcasses
he had for some time been living!

My road now follows the course of the Truckee River down the eastern
slope of the Sierras, and across the boundary line into Nevada. The