On Monday, July 22, we departed from Reno upon our last relay of American touring for three years. Prof. Wilson rode with us and as we passed Saw Mill Summit, the white dust died away and I saw nothing but flowers, beautiful foliage and waving grass. The Professor calmly remarked: "You have entered a new country; you are now in California." We left Truckee July 23 in the morning, making the 160 miles to Sacramento shortly after dusk. Four days in Sacramento, devoted to sight-seeing, and then we started for San Francisco, arriving there July 29. We had then covered 3,002 3-8 miles from Chicago in 52 days.
A complete overhauling of our wheels and time allowed for necessary shopping by Mrs. McIlrath, caused us to remain in San Francisco much longer than we had anticipated. The days did not hang heavy upon our hands, the wheelmen of the city being universally kind in their attentions to us both. My space is too limited to go into the details attendant upon our sojourn in San Francisco, as much as I should like for my cycling readers to know of the pleasure in store for a wheelman in the metropolis of the Pacific Coast.
On October 12 the telegraph message of three words, "We are off," was flashed to the Inter Ocean office in Chicago. We had taken passage on the Occidental and Oriental Line steamer City of Pekin, bound for Yokohama, the chief city of the flowery kingdom of Japan. Everything for our accommodation that could be done on board the steamer was ordered, not the least of our favors being two seats at the table of Captain Trask, commanding officer of the vessel. Our fellow passengers were an interesting lot, including two United States naval officers; a member of the English Parliament, his wife and a traveling companion; an officer of the Austrian army; two French globe trotters, who intended to write a book of travel upon their return to Paris; a Corean nobleman; four American missionaries, and a mysterious personage whose visiting card read, "Capt. Vladmir Samioloff," of the army of the Czar. The steerage passengers were exclusively Japanese and Chinese. The third day out Capt. Trask escorted me through the steerage and showed me the hospital ward, which contained three Japanese, who were going home to die. The captain explained to me that in every case of the death of a Japanese on board a steamer, the body was given a sailor's burial, but that with the Chinese it was entirely different. The body of a dead Chinaman, even though he were to die one day out, would be embalmed and taken home to his relatives, a Chinese embalmer nearly always being on board a vessel for just such emergencies.