long-haired party crossed the river. Then I met a team, the
driver of which stopped and said he was glad that I had not gone
to Cornelian Bay, it was such a bad trail, and hoped I had
enjoyed Tahoe. The driver of another team stopped and asked if I
had seen any bears. Then a man heavily armed, a hunter probably,
asked me if I were the English tourist who had "happened on" a
"Grizzly" yesterday. Then I saw a lumberer taking his dinner on
a rock in the river, who "touched his hat" and brought me a
draught of ice-cold water, which I could hardly drink owing to
the fractiousness of the horse, and gathered me some mountain
pinks, which I admired. I mention these little incidents to
indicate the habit of respectful courtesy to women which prevails
in that region. These men might have been excused for speaking
in a somewhat free-and-easy tone to a lady riding alone, and in
an unwonted fashion. Womanly dignity and manly respect for women
are the salt of society in this wild West.

My horse was so excitable that I avoided the center of Truckee,
and skulked through a collection of Chinamen's shanties to the
stable, where a prodigious roan horse, standing seventeen hands
high, was produced for my ride to the Donner Lake. I asked the
owner, who was as interested in my enjoying myself as a West
Highlander might have been, if there were not ruffians about who
might make an evening ride dangerous. A story was current of a
man having ridden through Truckee two evenings before with a
chopped-up human body in a sack behind the saddle, and hosts of
stories of ruffianism are located there, rightly or wrongly.
This man said, "There's a bad breed of ruffians, but the ugliest
among them all won't touch you. There's nothing Western folk
admire so much as pluck in a woman." I had to get on a barrel