reply of the irate tiller of the soil. We—the Doctor and myself—argued the case more temperately, and eventually the aggrieved owner of that lop-eared cur became so far mollified as to accept of a drink from the bottle of new whisky, which we had procured at San Rafael, after our first disaster on the road. When he took the bottle from his lips, his eyes were fall of tears, his lips were purple, and he gasped convulsively for breath. We felt that we were avenged, and, remounting, rode silently away up the trail, carrying our dead and wounded with us.
Out of the dusty carriage-road, at last we entered the narrow bridle-trail, which winds up the steep mountain-side, through the rocky malpais, covered with wide fields of the bitter chemisal, which spreads over the whole upper part of the mountain. This bitter shrub, of the leaves of which no living creature will eat, grows only on ground which will support nothing else, and is worthless for every purpose save that of holding the earth together. The sun was well up in the heavens and the air growing oppressively warm, when we passed above the timbered belt, and entered this chemisal country. We halted and looked back. In the southeast, San Francisco, lying overstretched, a tawny giant upon the gray hills of the peninsula, showed dimly through the veil of yellow dust, dun-colored smoke, and thin, luminous vapor which overhung it. Down to the south-ward, almost at our feet, lay the Golden Gate, the Presidio of San Francisco, and the straits leading up from the ocean to the Bay of San Francisco, with the
