We left Sacramento at 2 P.M., and evening was coming on as we got into the mountains. Still, long before sunset we saw many traces of large "placers," where whole sides of the hills had been dug out and washed away in the search for gold; the water being brought over the hill-tops by various ingenious methods. Sometimes, too, we came upon signs of active mining, in the water-courses led across valleys at levels above us, consisting of wooden troughs supported on trestles similar to those we are so frequently crossing. In one place I saw a party of men busily at work along the mountain side, preparatory to letting the water in upon the auriferous ground they were exploring.
I stood for more than two hours on the platform at the rear of the train, never tired of watching the wonderful scenery that continually receded from my gaze,--sometimes the track suddenly disappearing as we rounded a curve; and then looking ahead, I would find that an entirely new prospect was opening into view.
Never shall I forget the lovely scene that evening, when the golden sun was setting far away on the Pacific coast. The great red orb sank slowly behind a low hill at the end of the valley which stretched away on our right far beneath us. The pine-trees shone red in the departing sunlight for a short time; then the warm, dusky glimmer gradually faded away on the horizon, and all was over. The scene now looked more dreary, the mountains more rugged, and everything more desolate than before.
Up we rushed, still ascending the mountain slopes, winding in and out--higher and higher--the mountains becoming more rugged and wild, and the country more broken and barren-looking. Crossing slowly another trestle-bridge seventy-five feet high, at the upper part of a valley, we rounded a sharp curve, and found ourselves on a lofty mountain-side along which the road is cut, with a deep glen lying 2500 feet below us wrapped in the shades of evening. It seems to be quite night down there, and the trees are so shrouded in gloom that I can scarcely discern them in the bottom of that awful chasm. I can only clearly see defined against the sky above me, the rugged masses of overhanging rock, black-looking and terrible.